Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 
Getty  Research  Institute 


https://archive.org/details/sociallifeatromeOOfowl_O 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


•Jr&yv<k- 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


LN  THE  AGE  OF  CICERO 


BY 


W.  WARDE  FOWLER,  MA. 

FELLOW  AND  LECTURF.R  OF  LINCOLN  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 
AUTHOR  OF  ‘THE  CITY-STATE  OF  THE  GREEKS  AND  ROMANS,’ 
*THE  ROMAN  FESTIVALS  OF  THE  PERIOD  OF  THE  REPUBLIC,’  ETC. 


‘  Ad  ilia  mihi  pro  se  quisque  acriter  intendat  animum, 
quae  vita,  quae  mores  fuerint  ’  —  Livv,  Prae/atio. 


Neto  gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1922 


All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1909, 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.  Published  February,  1909. 


Nortooob  : 

Berwick  &  Smith  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.Sjk. 


AMICO  VETERRIMO 

I.  A.  STEWART 

BOMAE  PR1MUM  VISAS 
COMES  MEMOR 
D.  D.  D. 


V 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


This  book  was  originally  intended  to  be  a  companion 
to  Professor  Tucker’s  Life  in  Ancient  Athens ,  pub¬ 
lished  in  Messrs.  Macmillan’s  series  of  Handbooks  of 
Archaeology  and  Art ;  but  the  plan  was  abandoned 
for  reasons  on  which  I  need  not  dwell,  and  before 
the  book  was  quite  finished  I  was  called  to  other  and 
more  specialised  work.  As  it  stands,  it  is  merely 
an  attempt  to  supply  an  educational  want.  At  our 
schools  and  universities  we  read  the  great  writers  of 
the  last  age  of  the  Republic,  and  learn  something  of 
its  political  and  constitutional  history  ;  but  there  is 
no  book  in  our  language  which  supplies  a  picture  of 
life  and  manners,  of  education,  morals,  and  religion 
in  that  intensely  interesting  period.  The  society  of 
the  Augustan  age,  which  in  many  ways  was  very 
different,  is  known  much  better;  and  of  late  my 
friend  Professor  Dill’s  fascinating  volumes  have 
familiarised  us  with  the  social  life  of  two  several 
periods  of  the  Roman  Empire.  But  the  age  of  Cicero 
is  in  some  ways  at  least  as  important  as  any  period 
of  the  Empire  ;  it  is  a  critical  moment  in  the  history 
of  Graeco-Roman  civilisation.  And  in  the  Ciceronian 


vm 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


correspondence,  of  more  than  nine  hundred  contem¬ 
porary  letters,  we  have  the  richest  treasure-house  of 
social  life  that  has  survived  from  any  period  of 
classical  antiquity. 

Apart  from  this  correspondence  and  the  other 
literature  of  the  time,  my  mainstay  throughout  has 
been  the  Privatleben  tier  Rumer  of  Marquardt, 
which  forms  the  last  portion  of  the  great  Handbuch 
tier  Romischen  Altertiimer  of  Mommsen  and  Mar¬ 
quardt.  My  debt  is  great  also  to  Professors  Tyrrell 
and  Purser,  whose  labours  have  provided  us  with  a 
text  of  Cicero’s  letters  which  we  can  use  with 
confidence ;  the  citations  from  these  letters  have  all 
been  verified  in  the  new  Oxford  text  edited  by 
Professor  Purser.  One  other  name  I  must  mention 
with  gratitude.  I  firmly  believe  that  the  one  great 
hope  for  classical  learning  and  education  lies  in  the 
interest  which  the  unlearned  public  may  be  brought 
to  feel  in  ancient  life  and  thought.  AVe  have  just 
lost  the  veteran  French  scholar  who  did  more  perhaps 
to  create  and  maintain  such  an  interest  than  any 
man  of  his  time  ;  and  I  gladly  here  acknowledge  that 
it  was  Boissier’s  Ciceron  et  ses  amis  that  in  my 
younger  days  made  me  first  feel  the  reality  of  life 
and  character  in  an  age  of  which  I  then  hardly  knew 
anything  but  the  perplexing  political  history. 

I  have  to  thank  my  old  pupils,  Mr.  H.  E.  Mann 
and  Mr.  Gilbert  Watson,  for  kind  help  in  revising 
the  proofs. 


W.  W.  F. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 


Topographical  ...... 

Virgil’s  hero  arrives  at  Rome  by  the  Tiber :  we  follow  his 
example,  1  ;  justification  of  this,  2  ;  view  from  Janiculum 
and  its  lessons,  4  ;  advantages  of  the  position  of  Rome,  for 
defence  and  advance,  5  ;  disadvantages  as  to  commerce 
and  salubrity,  7  ;  views  of  Roman  writers,  9  ;  a  walk 
through  the  city  in  50  B.C.,  12;  Forum  Boarium  and 
Circus  maximus,  13  ;  Porta  Capena,  14  ;  via  Sacra,  16  ; 
summa  sacra  via  and  view  of  Forum,  17  ;  religious  build¬ 
ings  at  eastern  end  of  Forum,  19  ;  Forum  and  its  buildings 
in  Cicero’s  time,  19  ;  ascent  to  the  Capitol,  20  ;  temple  of 
Jupiter  and  the  view  from  it,  21. 


CHAPTER  II 


The  Lower  Population  .... 

Spread  of  the  city  outside  original  centre,  24  ;  the  plebs  dwelt 
mainly  in  the  lower  ground,  25  ;  little  known  about  its  life  : 
indifference  of  literary  men,  27  ;  housing  :  the  insulae,  28  ; 
no  sign  of  home  life,  29  ;  bad  condition  of  these  houses,  30  ; 
how  the  plebs  subsisted,  32  ;  vegetarian  diet,  32  ;  the  corn 
supply  and  its  problems,  34  ;  the  corn  law  of  Gaius  Gracchus, 
36;  results,  and  later  laws,  37  ;  the  water-supply,  39  ; 
history  of  aqueducts,  40  ;  employment  of  the  lower  grade 
population,  42  ;  aristocratic  contempt  for  retail  trading, 
43  ;  the  trade  gilds,  45  ;  relation  of  free  to  slave  labour, 
47  ;  bakers,  49  ;  supply  of  vegetables,  49  ;  of  clothing,  51  ; 
of  leather,  53  ;  of  iron,  etc.,  54  ;  gave  employment  to  large 
numbers,  55  ;  porterage,  55  ;  precarious  condition  of  labour, 
56  ;  fluctuation  of  markets,  56  ;  want  of  a  good  bankruptcy 
law,  57. 


ta  ora 
1-23 


24-59 


IX 


X 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAPTER  III 

PAGES 

The  Men  of  Business  and  their  Methods  .  .  60-96 

Meaning  of  equester  ordo,  60  ;  how  the  capitalist  came  by  his 
money,  62  ;  example  of  Atticus,  63  ;  incoming  of  wealth 
after  Hannibalic  war,  65  ;  suddenness  of  this,  68  ;  rise  of  a 
capitalist  class,  69  ;  the  contractors,  70  ;  the  public  contrac.- 
ing  companies,  71  ;  in  the  age  and  writings  of  Cicero,  73  ; 
their  political  influence,  74  ;  and  power  in  the  provinces, 

76  ;  the  bankers  and  money-lenders,  80  ;  origin  of  the 
Koinan  banker,  81  ;  nature  of  his  business,  82  ;  risks  of  the 
money-lender,  84  ;  general  indebtedness  of  society,  85 ; 

Cicero's  debts,  86  ;  story  of  Rabirius  Postumus,  90  ;  mischief 
done  by  both  contractors  and  money-lenders,  94. 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Governing  Aristocracy  ....  97-134 

The  old  noble  families,  97  ;  their  exclusiveness,  99  ;  Cicero’s 
attitude  towards  them,  99  ;  new  type  of  noble,  101  ;  Scipio 
Aemilianus  :  his  “circle,”  104;  its  influence  on  theCiceronian 
age  in  (1)  manners,  106;  (2)  literary  capacity,  109;  (3) 
philosophical  receptivity,  113  ;  Stoicism  at  Rome,  114  ;  its 
influence  on  the  lawyers,  117  ;  Sulpicius  Rufus,  his  life  and 
work,  118  ;  Epicureanism,  its  general  effect  on  society,  121  ; 
case  of  Calpurnius  Piso,  123  ;  pursuit  of  pleasure  and  neglect 
of  duty,  124  ;  senatorial  duties  neglected,  125  ;  frivolity  of 
the  younger  public  men,  127  ;  example  of  M.  Caelius  Rufus, 

127 ;  sketch  of  his  life  and  character,  128 ;  life  of  the  Forum 
as  seen  in  the  letters  of  Caelius,  131. 

CHAPTER  V 

Marriage  and  the  Rohan  Lady  .  .  .  135-167 

Meaning  of  matrimonium  :  its  religious  side,  135  ;  shown  from 
the  oldest  marriage  ceremony,  136  ;  its  legal  aspect,  138  ; 
marriage  cum  rnanu  abandoned,  139  ;  betrothal,  140  ; 
marriage  rites,  142  ;  dignified  position  of  Roman  matron, 

143  ;  the  ideal  inaterfamilias,  144  ;  change  in  the  character 
of  women,  146;  its  causes,  147  ;  the  ladies  of  Cicero's  time, 

150  ;  Terentia,  150  ;  Pomponia,  152  ;  ladies  of  society  and 
culture  :  Clodia,  155  ;  Sempronia,  156  ;  divorce,  its  frequency, 

158  ;  a  wonderful  Roman  lady  :  the  Laudatio  Turiae,  159  ; 
story  of  her  life  and  character  as  recorded  by  her  husband, 

160. 


CONTENTS 


XI 


CHAPTER  YX 

The  Education  of  the  Upper  Classes 

An  education  of  character  needed,  168  ;  Aristotle’s  idea  of 
education,  168  ;  little  interest  taken  in  education  at  Rome, 
171  ;  biographies  silent,  171  ;  education  of  Cato  the 
younger,  172  ;  of  Cicero’s  son  and  nephew,  173  ;  Varro  and 
Cicero  on  education,  175  ;  the  old  Roman  education  of  the 
body  and  character,  177  ;  causes  of  its  breakdown,  180  ; 
the  new  education  under  Greek  influence,  183  ;  schools, 
elementary,  183  ;  the  sententiae  in  use  in  schools,  185 ; 
arithmetic,  186  ;  utilitarian  character  of  teaching,  187  ; 
advanced  schools,  188  ;  teaching  too  entirely  linguistic  and 
literary,  189  ;  assumption  of  toga  virilis,  191  ;  study  of 
rhetoric  and  law,  193  ;  oratory  the  main  object,  195 ; 
results  of  this,  197  ;  Cicero’s  son  at  the  University  of 
Athens  :  his  letter  to  Tiro,  199. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Slave  Population  ,  .  , 

The  demand  for  labour  in  second  century  b.c.,  205  ;  how  it  was 
supplied,  206  ;  the  slave  trade,  208  ;  kidnapping  by  pirates, 
etc.,  208;  breeding  of  slaves,  210;  prices  of  slaves,  211  ; 
possible  number  in  Cicero’s  day,  212  ;  economic  aspect  of 
slavery :  did  it  interfere  with  free  labour  ?  213  ;  no 
apparent  rivalry  between  them,  214  ;  either  in  Rome,  214  ; 
or  on  the  farm,  217  ;  the  slave-shepherds  of  South  Italy, 
220  ;  they  exclude  free  labour,  222  ;  legal  aspect  of  slavery  : 
absolute  power  of  owner,  223  ;  prospect  of  manumission, 
224  ;  political  results  of  slave  system,  225  ;  of  manumission, 
227  ;  ethical  aspect :  destruction  of  family  life,  230  ;  no 
moral  standard,  232  ;  effects  of  slavery  on  the  slave-owners, 
234. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  House  of  the  Rich  Man  in  Town  and  Country 

Out-of-door  life  at  Rome,  237  ;  but  the  Roman  house  originally 
a  home,  238  ;  religious  character  of  it,  233  ;  the  atrium  and 
its  contents,  240  ;  development  of  atrium  :  the  peristylium, 


PAOES 

168-203 


204-236 


237-262 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


PAGES 


xii 


242  ;  desire  for  country  houses :  crowding  at  Rome,  243  ; 
callers,  clients,  etc.,  245  ;  effects  of  this  city  life  on  the 
individual,  246  ;  country  house  of  Scipio  Africanus,  247  ; 
watering-places  in  Campania,  248  ;  meaning  of  villa  in 
Cicero’s  time  :  Hortensius’  park,  250  ;  Cicero’s  villas  : 
Tusculum,  251 ;  Arpinum,  253 ;  Formiae,  256  ;  Puteoli,  257  ; 
Cumae,  258  ;  Pompeii,  258  ;  Astura,  259  ;  constant  change 
of  residence,  and  its  effects,  260. 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Daily  Life  of  the  Well-to-do  . 

Roman  division  of  the  day,  263  ;  sundials,  265  ;  hours  varied 
according  to  the  season,  265  ;  early  rising  of  Romans,  266  ; 
want  of  artificial  light,  267  ;  Cicero’s  early  hours,  268  ; 
early  callers,  269  ;  breakfast,  followed  by  business,  270  ; 
morning  in  the  Forum,  271 ;  lunch  (prandium),  273;  siesta, 
274  ;  the  bath,  275  ;  dinner  :  its  hour  becomes  later,  277  ; 
dinner-parties  :  the  triclinium,  279  ;  drinking  after  dinner, 
279  ;  Cicero’s  indifference  to  the  table,  282  ;  his  entertain¬ 
ment  of  Caesar  at  Cumae,  283. 


CHAPTER  X 

Holidays  and  Public  Amusements 

The  Italian  festa,  ancient  and  modern,  285  ;  meaning  of  the  word 
feriae,  287  ;  change  in  its  meaning,  288  ;  holidays  of  plebs, 
289  ;  festival  of  Anna  Perenna,  289  ;  The  Saturnalia,  290  ; 
the  ludi  and  their  origin,  291  ;  ludi  Romani  and  plebeii, 
292  ;  other  ludi,  293  ;  supported  by  State,  294  ;  by  private 
individuals,  295  ;  admission  free,  298  ;  Circus  maximus  and 
chariot- racing,  299  ;  gladiators  at  funeral  games,  302  ; 
stage-plays  at  ludi,  304  ;  political  feeling  expressed  at  the 
theatre,  306  ;  decadence  of  tragedy  in  Cicero’s  time,  308  ; 
the  first  permanent  theatre,  55  B.C.,  309  ;  opening  of 
Pompey’s  theatre,  310  ;  Cicero’s  account  of  it,  311  ;  the 
great  actors  of  Cicero’s  day  :  Aesopus,  313  ;  Roscius,  314  ; 
the  farces,  315  ;  Publilius  Syrus  and  the  mime,  317. 


263-284 


285-318 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  XI 


Religion  .  .... 

Absence  of  real  religious  feeling,  319  ;  neglect  of  worship, 
except  in  the  family,  320 ;  foreign  cults,  e.g.  of  Isis,  322  ; 
religious  attitude  of  Cicero  and  other  public  men  :  free 
thought,  combined  with  maintenance  of  the  ius  divinum, 
323;  Lucretius  condemns  all  religion  as  degrading:  his 
failure  to  produce  a  substitute  for  it,  326  ;  Stoic  attitude 
towards  religion  :  Stoicism  finds  room  for  the  gods  of  the 
State,  332  ;  Yarro’s  treatment  of  theology  on  Stoic  lines, 
335  ;  his  monotheistic  conception  of  Jupiter  Capitolinus, 
337  ;  the  Stoic  Jupiter  a  legal  rather  than  a  moral  deity, 
340  ;  Jupiter  in  the  Aeneid,  341  ;  superstition  of  the  age, 
343;  belief  in  portents,  visions,  etc.,  344;  ideas  of  im¬ 
mortality,  346  ;  sense  of  sin,  or  despair  of  the  future,  350. 


Epilogue 


xiii 


PAOBS 

319-352 


353-355 


Index 


357-362 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FAGI 

Plan  of  House  of  the  Silver  Wedding  at  Pompeii  .  244 
Map  to  Illustrate  the  Position  of  Cicero's  Villas  .  252 
Plan  of  the  Villa  of  Diomedes  at  Pompeii  .  .  255 

Plan  of  a  Triclinium  .  .  .  .  .279 

i 

MAP 

Home  in  the  Last  Years  of  the  Republic  .  At  end  of  Volume 


xv 


Translations  of  passages  in  foreign  languages  in  this 
book  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix  following  page  362. 


xvi 


CHAPTER  I 

TOPOGRAPHICAL 

The  modern  traveller  of  to-day  arriving  at  Rome  by 
rail  drives  to  his  hotel  through  the  uninteresting 
streets  of  a  modern  town,  and  thence  finds  his  way 
to  the  Forum  and  the  Palatine,  where  his  attention 
is  speedily  absorbed  by  excavations  which  he  finds 
it  difficult  to  understand.  It  is  as  likely  as  not 
that  he  may  leave  Rome  without  once  finding  an 
opportunity  of  surveying  the  whole  site  of  the 
ancient  city,  or  of  asking,  and  possibly  answering 
the  question,  how  it  ever  came  to  be  where  it  is. 
While  occupied  with  museums  and  picture-galleries, 
he  may  well  fail  “totam  aestimare  Romam.”  1 
Assuming  that  the  reader  has  never  been  in  Rome, 
I  wish  to  transport  him  thither  in  imagination,  and 
with  the  help  of  the  map,  by  an  entirely  different 
route.  But  first  let  him  take  up  the  eighth  book 
of  the  Aeneid,  and  read  afresh  the  oldest  and  most 
picturesque  of  all  stories  of  arrival  at  Rome; 2  let 

1  Martial  iv.  64.  12. 

2  Aen.  viii.  90  foil.  The  Capitoline  hill,  which  Virgil  means  by 
“arx,”  is  a  conspicuous  object  from  the  river  just  below  the  Aventine, 

35  B 


2 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


him  dismiss  all  handbooks  from  his  mind,  and  con¬ 
centrate  it  on  Aeneas  and  his  ships  on  their  way 
from  the  sea  to  the  site  of  the  Eternal  City. 

Virgil  showed  himself  a  true  artist  in  bringing 
his  hero  up  the  Tiber,  which  in  his  day  was  freely 
used  for  navigation  up  to  and  even  above  the  city. 
He  saw  that  by  the  river  alone  he  could  land  him 
exactly  where  he  could  be  shown  by  his  friendly 
host,  almost  at  a  glance,  every  essential  feature  of 
the  site,  every  spot  most  hallowed  by  antiquity  in 
the  minds  of  his  readers.  Rowing  up  the  river, 
which  graciously  slackened  its  swift  current,  Aeneas 
presently  caught  sight  of  the  walls  and  citadel,  and 
landed  just  beyond  the  point  where  the  Aventine 
hill  falls  steeply  almost  to  the  water’s  edge.  Here 
in  historical  times  was  the  dockyard  of  Rome;  and 
here,  when  the  poet  was  a  child,  Cato  had  landed 
with  the  spoils  of  Cyprus,  as  the  nearest  point  of 
the  river  for  the  conveyance  of  that  ill-gotten  gain 
to  the  treasury  under  the  Capitol.1  Virgil  imagines 
the  bank  clothed  with  wood,  and  in  the  wood — 
where  afterwards  was  the  Forum  Boarium,  a  crowded 
haunt — Aeneas  finds  Evander  sacrificing  at  the  Ara 
maxima  of  Hercules,  of  all  spots  the  best  starting- 
point  for  a  walk  through  the  heart  of  the  ancient  city. 

and  would  have  been  much  more  conspicuous  in  the  poet’s  time.  There 
is  a  view  of  it  from  this  point  in  Burn’s  Rome  and  the  Campagna,  p.  184 

1  Plutarch,  Cato  minor  30.  Cato  was  expected  to  land  at  the  com¬ 
mercial  docks  below  the  Aventine  (see  below,  p.  14),  where  the  senate 
and  magistrates  were  awaiting  him,  but  with  his  usual  rudeness  rowed 
past  them  to  the  navalia. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


o 


To  the  right  was  the  Aventine,  rising  to  about  a 
hundred  and  thirty  feet  above  the  river,  and  this  was 
the  first  of  the  hills  of  Rome  to  be  impressed  on 
the  mind  of  the  stranger,  by  the  tale  of  Hercules 
and  Cacus  which  Evander  tells  his  guest.  In  front, 
but  close  by,  was  the  long  western  flank  of  the 
Palatine  hill,  where,  when  the  tale  had  been  told  and 
the  rites  of  Hercules  completed,  Aeneas  was  to  be 
shown  the  cave  of  the  Lupercal;  and  again  to  the 
left,  approaching  the  river  within  two  hundred  yards, 
was  the  Capitol  to  be : 

Hinc  ad  Tarpeiam  sedem  et  Capitolia  ducit, 

Aurea  nunc,  olim  silvestribus  horrida  dumis. 

Below  it  the  hero  is  shown  the  shrine  of  the  pro¬ 
phetic  nymph  Carmenta,  with  the  Porta  Car- 
mentalis  leading  into  the  Campus  Martius ;  then 
the  hollow  destined  one  day  to  be  the  Forum 
Romanum,  and  beyond  it,  in  the  valley  of  the  little 
stream  that  here  found  its  way  down  from  the  plain 
beyond,  the  grove  of  the  Argiletum.  Here,  and  up 
the  slope  of  the  Clivus  sacer,  with  which  we  shall 
presently  make  acquaintance,  were  the  lowing  herds 
of  Evander,  who  then  takes  his  guest  to  repose  for 
the  night  in  his  own  dwelling  on  the  Palatine,  the 
site  of  the  most  ancient  Roman  settlement.1 

What  Evander  showed  to  his  visitor,  as  we  shall 
presently  see,  comprised  the  whole  site  of  the  heart 

1  Aen.  viii.  363.  Possibly  Virgil  meant  to  put  this  dwelling  on  the 
site  of  the  future  Kegia,  just  below  the  Palatine  and  between  it  and 
the  Porum .  See  Servius  ad  loc. 


4 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


and  life  of  the  city  as  it  was  to  be,  all  that  lay  under 
the  steep  sides  of  the  three  almost  isolated  hills,  the 
Capitoline,  Palatine,  and  Aventine.  The  poet  knew 
that  he  need  not  extend  their  walk  to  the  other  so- 
called  hills,  which  come  down  as  spurs  from  the  plain 
of  the  Campagna,  —  Quirinal,  Esquiline,  Caelian. 
Densely  populated  as  those  were  in  his  own  day, 
they  were  not  essential  organs  of  social  and  political 
life;  the  pulse  of  Rome  was  to  be  felt  beating  most 
strongly  in  the  space  between  them  and  the  river, 
where  too  the  oldest  and  most  cherished  associations 
of  the  Roman  people,  mythical  and  historical,  were 
fixed.  I  propose  to  take  the  reader,  with  a  single 
deviation,  over  the  same  ground,  and  to  ask  him  to 
imagine  it  as  it  was  in  the  period  with  which  we  are 
concerned  in  this  book.  But  first,  in  order  to  take  in 
with  eye  and  mind  the  whole  city  and  its  position, 
let  us  leave  Aeneas,  and  crossing  to  the  right  bank 
of  the  Tiber  by  the  Pons  Aemilius,1  let  us  climb  to  the 
fort  of  the  Janiculam,  an  ancient  outwork  against 
attack  from  the  north,  by  way  of  the  via  Aurelia, 
and  here  enjoy  the  view  which  Martial  has  made  for 
ever  famous: 

Hinc  septem  dominos  videre  montes 
Et  totam  licet  aestimare  Romam, 

Albanos  quoque  Tusculosque  colles 
Et  quodcunque  iacet  sub  urbe  frigus. 

No  one  who  has  ever  stood  on  the  Janiculum,  and 


1  The  modern  visitor  would  cross  by  the  Ponte  Rotto,  which  is  in 
the  same  position  as  the  ancient  bridge,  just  below  the  Tiber  island. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


5 


looked  down  on  the  river  and  the  city,  and  across  the 
Latin  plain  to  the  Alban  mountain  and  the  long  line 
of  hills — the  last  spurs  of  the  Apennines — enclosing 
the  plain  to  the  north,  can  fail  to  realise  that  Rome 
was  originally  an  outpost  of  the  Latins,  her  kinsmen 
and  confederates,  against  the  powerful  and  uncanny 
Etruscan  race  who  dwelt  in  the  undulating  hill  coun¬ 
try  to  the  north.  The  site  was  an  outpost,  because 
the  three  isolated  hills  make  it  a  natural  point  of  de¬ 
fence,  and  of  attack  towards  the  north  if  attack  were 
desirable;  no  such  point  of  similar  vantage  is  to  be 
found  lower  down  the  river,  and  if  the  city  had  been 
placed  higher  up,  Latium  would  have  been  left  open 
to  attack, — the  three  hills  would  have  been  left  open 
to  the  enemy  to  gain  a  firm  footing  on  Latin  soil. 
It  was  also,  as  it  turned  out,  an  admirable  base  of 
operations  for  carrying  on  war  in  the  long  and  narrow 
peninsula,  so  awkward,  as  Hannibal  found  to  his  cost, 
for  working  out  a  definite  plan  of  conquest.  From 
Rome,  astride  of  the  Tiber,  armies  could  operate  on 
“ interior  lines”  against  any  combination  —  could 
strike  north,  east,  and  south  at  the  same  moment. 
With  Latium  faithful  behind  her  she  could  not  be 
taken  in  the  rear;  the  unconquerable  Hannibal  did 
indeed  approach  her  once  on  that  side,  but  fell  away 
again  like  a  wave  on  a  rocky  shore.  From  the  sea 
no  enemy  ever  attempted  to  reach  her  till  Genseric 
landed  at  Ostia  in  a.d.  455. 

Thus  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how  Rome 
came  to  be  the  leading  city  of  Latium;  how  she 


6 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


came  to  work  her  conquering  way  into  Etruria  to  the 
north,  the  land  of  a  strange  people  who  at  one  time 
threatened  to  dominate  the  whole  of  Italy;  how  she 
advanced  up  the  Tiber  valley  and  its  affluents  into 
the  heart  of  the  Apennines,  and  southward  into  the 
Oscan  country  of  Samnium  and  the  rich  plain  of 
Campania.  A  glance  at  the  map  of  Italy  will  show 
us  at  once  how  apt  is  Livy’s  remark  that  Rome 
was  placed  in  the  centre  of  the  peninsula.1  That 
peninsula  looks  as  if  it  were  cleft  in  twain  by  the 
Tiber,  or  in  other  words,  the  Tiber  drains  the  greater 
part  of  central  Italy,  and  carries  the  water  down  a 
well-marked  valley  to  a  central  point  on  the  western 
coast,  with  a  volume  greater  than  that  of  any  other 
river  south  of  the  Po.  A  city  therefore  that  commands 
the  Tiber  valley,  and  especially  the  lower  part  of  it,  is 
in  a  position  of  strategic  advantage  with  regard  to  the 
whole  peninsula.  Now  Rome,  as  Strabo  remarked, 
was  the  only  city  actually  situated  on  the  bank  of  the 
river ;  and  Rome  was  not  only  on  the  river,  but  from  the 
earliest  times  astride  of  it.  She  held  the  land  on  both 
banks  from  her  own  site  to  the  Tiber  mouth  at  Ostia, 
as  we  know  from  the  fact  that  one  of  her  most  ancient 
priesthoods  2  had  its  sacred  grove  five  miles  down  the 
river  on  the  northern  bank.  Thus  she  had  easy  access 
to  the  sea  by  the  river  or  by  land,  and  an  open  way 
inland  up  the  one  great  natural  entrance  from  the 
sea  into  central  Italy.3  Her  position  on  the  Tiber 


1  Livy  v.  54.  2  The  Fratres  Arvales. 

3  For  navigation  of  the  river  above  Rome  see  Strabo  p.  235. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


7 


is  much  like  that  of  Hispalis  (Seville)  on  the  Baetis, 
or  of  Arles  on  the  Rhone,  cities  opening  the  way  of 
commerce  or  conquest  up  the  basins  of  two  great  rivers. 
In  spite  of  some  disadvantages,  to  be  noticed  directly, 
there  was  no  such  favourable  position  in  Italy  for  a 
virile  people  apt  to  fight  and  to  conquer.  Capua,  in 
the  rich  volcanic  plain  of  Campania,  had  far  greater 
advantages  in  the  way  of  natural  wealth;  but  Capua 
was  too  far  south,  in  a  more  enervating  climate,  and 
virility  was  never  one  of  her  strong  points.  Corfinium, 
in  the  heart  of  the  Apennines,  once  seemed  threatening 
to  become  a  rival,  and  was  for  a  time  the  centre  of  a 
rebellious  confederation;  but  this  city  was  too  near 
the  east  coast— -an  impossible  position  for  a  pioneer 
of  Italian  dominion.  Italy  looks  west,  not  east ; 
almost  all  her  natural  harbours  are  on  her  western 
side;  and  though  that  at  Ostia,  owing  to  the  amount 
of  silt  carried  down  by  the  Tiber,  has  never  been  a 
good  one,  it  is  the  only  port  which  can  be  said  to 
command  an  entrance  into  the  centre  of  the  peninsula. 

No  one,  however,  would  contend  that  the  position 
of  Rome  is  an  ideal  one.  Taken  in  and  by  itself, 
without  reference  to  Italy  and  the  Mediterranean, 
that  position  has  little  to  recommend  it.  It  is  too 
far  from  the  sea,  nearly  twenty  miles  up  the  valley 
of  a  river  with  an  inconveniently  rapid  current,  to  be 
a  great  commercial  or  industrial  centre;  and  such  a 
centre  Rome  has  never  really  been  in  the  whole  course 
of  her  history.  There  are  no  great  natural  sources  of 
wealth  in  the  neighbourhood — no  mines  like  those  at 


8 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Laurium  in  Attica,  no  vast  expanse  of  corn-growing 
country  like  that  of  Carthage.  The  river  too  was 
liable  to  flood,  as  it  still  is,  and  a  familiar  ode  of 
Horace  tells  us  how  in  the  time  of  Augustus  the  water 
reached  even  to  the  heart  of  the  city.1  Lastly,  the 
site  has  never  really  been  a  healthy  one,  especially 
during  the  months  of  July  and  August,2  which  are 
the  most  deadly  throughout  the  basin  of  the 
Mediterranean.  Pestilences  were  common  at  Rome 
in  her  early  history,  and  have  left  their  mark  in  the 
calendar  of  her  religious  festivals;  for  example,  the 
Apolline  games  were  instituted  during  the  Hannibalic 
war  as  the  result  of  a  pestilence,  and  fixed  for  the 
unhealthy  month  of  July.  Foreigners  from  the  north 
of  Europe  have  always  been  liable  to  fever  at  Rome; 
invaders  from  the  north  have  never  been  able  to 
withstand  the  climate  for  long;  in  the  Middle  Ages 
one  German  army  after  another  melted  away  under 
her  walls,  and  left  her  mysteriously  victorious. 

There  are  some  signs  that  the  Romans  themselves 
had  occasional  misgivings  about  the  excellence  of 
their  site.  There  was  a  tradition,  that  after  the 

1  Horace  Od.  i.  2.  After  a  bad  flood  in  a.d.  15  proposals  were  made 
for  diverting  a  part  of  the  water  coming  down  the  Tiber  into  the  Amus, 
but  this  met  with  fatal  opposition  from  the  superstition  of  the  country 
people  (Tacitus,  Ann.  i.  79).  Nissen,  Italische  Landeskunde,  i.  p.  324, 
has  collected  the  records  of  these  floods. 

2  See  Nissen,  i.  p.  407.  But  it  seems  likely  that  the  Tiber  valley  was 
less  malarious  then  than  now  (see  Nissen’s  chapter  on  malaria  in  Italy, 
p.  410  foil.).  In  an  interesting  paper  on  Malaria  and  History ,  by  Mr. 
W.  II.  S.  Jones  (Liverpool  University  Press),  which  reached  me  after 
this  chapter  was  written,  the  author  is  inclined  to  attribute  the  ethical 
and  physical  degeneracy  of  the  Romans  of  the  Empire  partly  to  this  cause. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


9 


burning  of  the  city  by  the  Gauls,  it  was  proposed 
that  the  people  should  desert  the  site  and  migrate 
to  Yeii,  the  conquered  Etruscan  city  to  the  north, 
and  that  it  needed  all  the  eloquence  of  Camillus  to 
dissuade  them.  It  has  given  Livy 1  the  opportunity 
of  putting  into  the  orator’s  mouth  a  splendid 
encomium  on  the  city  and  its  site ;  but  no  such 
story  could  well  have  found  a  place  in  Roman 
annals  if  the  Capitol  had  been  as  deeply  set  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people  as  was  the  Acropolis  in  the 
hearts  of  the  Athenians.  At  a  later  time  of  deep 
depression  Horace2  could  fancifully  suggest  that  the 
Romans  should  leave  their  ancient  home  like  the 
Phocaeans  of  old,  and  seek  a  new  one  in  the  islands 
of  the  blest.  Some  idea  was  abroad  that  Caesar  had 
meant  to  transfer  the  seat  of  government  to  Ilium, 
and  after  Actium  the  same  intention  was  ascribed  to 
Augustus,  probably  without  reason ;  but  the  third 
ode  of  Horace’s  third  book  seems  to  express  the 
popular  rumour,  and  in  an  interesting  paper 
Mommsen 3  has  stated  his  opinion  that  the  new  master 
of  the  Roman  world  may  really  have  thought  of 
changing  the  seat  of  government  to  Byzantium,  the 
supreme  convenience  and  beauty  of  which  were 
already  beginning  to  be  appreciated.4 

Virgil,  on  the  other  hand,  though  he  came  from 
the  foot  of  the  Alps  and  did  not  love  Rome  as  a  place 
to  dwell  in,  is  absolutely  true  to  the  great  traditions 


1  Livy  v.  54. 

3  Reden  und  Aufsdtze,  p.  173  foil. 


2  Horace,  Epode  16. 
*  lb.  p.  175. 


IO 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


of  the  site.  For  him  “  rerum  facta  est  pulclierrima 
Roma”  (Georg,  ii.  534);  and  in  the  Aeneid  the 
destiny  of  Rome  is  so  foretold  and  expressed  as  to 
make  it  impossible  for  a  Roman  reader  to  think  of  it 
except  in  connexion  with  the  city.  He  who  needs  to 
be  convinced  of  this  has  but  to  turn  once  more  to 
the  eighth  Aeneid,  and  to  add  to  the  charming  story 
of  Aeneas’  first  visit  to  the  seven  hills,  the  splendid 
picture  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  Roman  dominion 
engraved  on  the  shield  which  Venus  gives  her  son. 
Cicero  again,  though  he  was  no  Roman  by  birth,  was 
passionately  fond  of  Rome,  and  in  his  treatise  de 
Republica  praised  with  genuine  affection  her  “  nativa 
praesidia.” 1  He  says  of  Romulus,  “  that  he  chose 
a  spot  abounding  in  springs,  healthy  though  in  a 
pestilent  region ;  for  her  hills  are  open  to  the  breezes, 
yet  give  shade  to  the  hollows  below  them.”  And 
Livy,  in  the  passage  already  quoted,  in  language 
even  more  perfect  than  Cicero’s,  wrote  of  all  the 
advantages  of  the  site,  ending  by  describing  it  as 
“  regionum  Italiae  medium,  ad  incrementum  urbis 
natum  unice  locum.”  It  is  curious  that  all  these 
panegyrics  were  written  by  men  who  were  not 
natives  of  Rome  ;  Virgil  came  from  Mantua,  Livy 
from  Padua,  Cicero  from  Arpinum.  They  are  doubt¬ 
less  genuine,  though  in  some  degree  rhetorical ;  those 
of  Cicero  and  Livy  can  hardly  be  called  strictly 
accurate.  But  taken  together  they  may  help 
us  to  understand  that  fascination  of  the  site  of 


De  Rep.  ii.  5  and  6. 


i  TOPOGRAPHICAL  n 

Rome,  to  which  Virgil  gave  such  inimitable  ex¬ 
pression. 

On  this  site,  which  once  had  been  crowded  only 
when  the  Roman  farmers  had  taken  refuge  within  the 
walls  with  their  families,  flocks,  and  herds  on  the 
threatening  appearance  of  an  enemy,  by  the  time  of 
Cicero  an  enormous  population  had  gathered.  Many 
causes  had  combined  to  bring  this  population 
together,  which  can  be  only  glanced  at  here.  As  in 
Europe  and  America  at  the  present  day,  so  in  all 
the  Mediterranean  lands  since  the  age  of  Alexander, 
there  had  been  a  constantly  increasing  tendency  to 
flock  into  the  towns ;  and  the  rise  of  huge  cities, 
such  as  Antioch,  Alexandria,  Carthage,  Corinth,  or 
Rhodes,  with  all  the  inevitably  ensuing  social 
problems  and  complications,  is  one  of  the  most 
marked  characteristics  of  the  last  three  centuries  B.c. 
In  Italy  in  particular,  apart  from  the  love  of  a 
pleasant  social  life  free  from  manual  toil,  with 
various  convenient  resorts  and  amusements,  the  long 
series  of  wars  had  served  to  increase  the  population, 
in  spite  of  the  constant  loss  by  the  sword  or  pesti¬ 
lence  ;  for  the  veteran  soldier  who  had  been  serving, 
perhaps  for  years,  beyond  sea,  found  it  hard  to  return 
to  the  monotonous  life  of  agriculture,  or  perhaps 
found  his  holding  appropriated  by  some  powerful 
landholder  with  whom  it  would  be  hopeless  to  contest 
possession.  The  wars  too  brought  a  steadily  increas¬ 
ing  population  of  slaves  to  the  city,  many  of  whom 
in  course  of  time  would  be  manumitted,  would  marry, 


12 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


and  so  increase  the  free  population.  These  are  only 
a  few  of  the  many  causes  at  work  after  the  Punic  wars 
which  crammed  together  in  the  site  of  Rome  a  popu¬ 
lation  which,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  last  century 
b.c.,  probably  reached  half  a  million  or  even  more.1 

Let  us  now  descend  from  the  Janiculum,  and  try 
to  imagine  ourselves  in  the  Rome  of  Cicero’s  time, 
say  in  the  last  year  of  the  Republic,  50  B.c.,  as  we 
walk  through  the  busy  haunts  of  this  crowded 
population.  We  will  not  delay  on  the  right  bank 
of  the  Tiber,  which  had  probably  long  been  the  home 
of  tradesmen  in  their  gilds,2  and  where  farther  down 
the  rich  were  buying  land  for  gardens 3  and  suburban 
villas ;  but  cross  by  the  Pons  Aemilius,  with  the 
Tiber  island  on  our  left,  and  the  opening  of  the 
Cloaca  maxima,  wThich  drained  the  water  from  the 
Forum,  facing  us,  as  it  still  does,  a  little  to  our  right. 
We  find  ourselves  close  to  the  Forum  Boarium,  an 
open  cattle-market,  with  shops  (tabernae)  all  around 
it,  as  we  know  from  Livy’s  record  of  a  fire  here, 
which  burnt  many  of  these  shops  and  much  valuable 
merchandise.4  Here  by  the  river  was  in  fact  the 

1  Beloeli,  Die  Bewolkerung  der  griechisch-romischen  Welt,  cap.  9,  approach¬ 
ing  the  problem  by  three  several  methods,  puts  it  in  the  first  century  a.d. 
at  800,000,  including  slaves.  In  Cicero’s  time  it  was,  no  doubt,  considerably 
less  ;  but  we  know  that  in  his  last  years  320,000  free  persons  were  receiving 
doles  of  corn,  apart  from  slaves  and  the  well-to-do. 

2  Hiilsen-Jordan,  Bom.  Topographie,  vol.  i.  part  iii.  pp.  627,  638. 

3  lb.  643  ;  Cic.  ad  Att.  xv.  15.  Here,  after  the  death  of  his  daughter 
Tullia,  Cicero  wished  to  buy  land  on  which  to  erect  a  fanum  to  her  (Cic. 
ad  Att.  xii.  19).  Here  also  were  the  horti  Caesaris. 

*  Livy  xxxv.  40. 


[ 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


13 


market  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word  ;  the  Forum 
Romanum,  which  we  are  making  for,  was  now  the 
centre  of  political  and  judicial  business,  and  of 
social  life. 

We  might  go  direct  to  the  great  Forum,  up  the 
Yelabrum,  or  valley  (once  a  marsh),  right  in  front  of 
us  between  the  Capitol  on  the  left  and  the  Palatine 
on  the  right.  But  as  we  look  in  the  latter  direction, 
we  are  attracted  by  a  long  low  erection  almost  fill¬ 
ing  the  space  between  the  Palatine  and  the  Aventine, 
and  turning  in  that  direction  we  find  ourselves  at  the 
lower  end  of  the  Circus  Maximus,  which  as  yet  is  the 
chief  place  of  amusement  of  the  Roman  people.  Two 
famous  shrines,  one  at  each  end  of  it,  remind  us  that 
we  are  on  historic  ground.  At  the  end  where  we 
stand,  and  where  are  the  carceres,  the  starting-point 
for  the  competing  chariots,  was  the  Ara  maxima  of 
Hercules,  which  prompted  Evander  to  tell  the  tale  of 
Cacus  to  his  guest ;  at  the  other  end  was  the  subter¬ 
ranean  altar  of  Consus  the  harvest-god,  with  which 
was  connected  another  tale,  that  of  the  rape  of  the 
Sabines.  All  the  associations  of  this  quarter  point  to 
the  agricultural  character  of  the  early  Romans  ;  both 
cattle  and  harvesting  have  their  appropriate  myth. 
But  nothing  is  visible  here  now,  except  the  pretty 
little  round  temple  of  a  later  date,  which  is  believed 
to  have  been  that  of  Portunus,  the  god  of  the  landing- 
place  from  the  river.1 

The  Circus,  some  six  hundred  yards  long,  at  the 

1  Hiilsen- Jordan,  op.  cit.  p.  143  note. 


14 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


time  of  Cicero  was  still  mainly  a  wooden  erection  in 
the  form  of  a  long  parallelogram,  with  shops  or  booths 
sheltering  under  its  sides  ;  we  shall  visit  it  again  when 
dealing  with  the  public  entertainments.1  Above  it  on 
the  right  is  the  Aventine  hill,  a  densely  populated 
quarter  of  the  lower  classes,  crowned  with  the  famous 
temple  of  Diana,  a  deity  specially  connected  with  the 
plebs.2  The  Clivus  Patricius  led  up  to  this  temple ; 
down  this  slope,  on  the  last  day  of  his  life,  Gaius 
Gracchus  had  hurried,  to  cross  the  river  and  meet 
his  murderers  in  the  grove  of  Furrina,  of  which  the 
site  has  lately  been  discovered.  If  we  were  to 
ascend  it  we  should  see,  on  the  river-bank  below  and 
beyond  it,  the  warehouses  and  granaries  for  storing 
the  corn  for  the  city’s  food-supply,  which  Gracchus 
had  been  the  first  to  extend  and  organise. 

But  to  ascend  the  Aventine  would  take  us  out 
of  our  course.  Pushing  on  to  the  farther  end  of  the 
Circus,  where  the  chariots  turned  at  the  metae,  we 
may  pause  a  moment,  for  in  front  of  us  is  a  gate  in 
the  city  wall,  the  Porta  Capena,  by  which  most 
travellers  from  the  south,  using  the  via  Appia  or  the 
via  Latina,  would  enter  the  city.3  Outside  the  wall 
there  was  then  a  small  temple  of  Mars,  from  which 

1  See  below,  p.  302.  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  (iii.  68)  gives  an 
elaborate  account  of  it  in  tbe  time  of  Augustus,  when  it  had  been  altered 
and  ornamented. — Hiilsen- Jordan,  p.  120  folL 

2  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  199  ;  Wissowa  in  Pauly-Wissowa,  Real- 
Encyklopadie,  s.v.  Diana. 

3  The  two  roads  converged  just  before  arriving  at  the  city.  The  reader 
may  be  reminded  that  it  was  by  the  via  Appia  that  St.  Paul  entered  Rome 
(Acts  xxviii.).  Another  useful  passage  for  this  gate  is  Juvenal  iii.  10  foil. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


i5 


the  procession  of  the  Equites  started  each  year  on  the 
Ides  of  Quinctilis  (July)  on  its  way  to  the  Capitol, 
by  the  same  route  that  we  are  about  to  take.  We 
shall  also  be  following  the  steps  of  Cicero  on  the  happy 
day,  September  4,  57  B.c.,  when  he  returned  from 
exile.  “  On  my  arrival  at  the  Porta  Capena,”  he  writes 
to  Atticus,  “  the  steps  of  the  temples  were  already 
crowded  from  top  to  bottom  by  the  populace ;  they 
showed  their  congratulations  by  the  loudest  applause, 
and  similar  crowds  and  applause  followed  me  right 
up  to  the  Capitol,  and  in  the  Forum  and  on  the 
Capitol  itself  there  was  again  a  wonderful  throng” 
(ad  Att.  iv.  l). 

We  are  now,  as  the  map  will  show,  at  the  south¬ 
eastern  angle  of  the  Palatine,  of  which,  in  fact,  we  are 
making  the  circuit ; 1  and  here  we  turn  sharp  to  the 
left,  by  what  is  now  the  via  di  San  Gregorio,  along  a 
narrow  valley  or  dip  between  the  Palatine  and  Caelian 
hills — the  latter  the  first  we  have  met  of  the  “  hills  ” 
which  are  not  isolated,  but  spurs  of  the  plain  of  the 
Campagna.  The  Caelian  need  not  detain  us  ;  it  was 
thickly  populated  towards  the  end  of  the  Republican 
period,  but  was  not  a  very  fashionable  quarter,  nor 
one  of  the  chief  haunts  of  social  life.  It  held  many 
of  those  large  lodging-houses  (insulae)  of  which  we 
shall  hear  more  in  the  next  chapter ;  one  of  these 
stood  so  high  that  it  interfered  with  the  view  of  the 
augur  taking  the  auspices  on  the  Capitol,  and  was 

1  It  might  be  useful  here  to  follow  the  course  of  the  pomerium,  which 
also  went  round  the  Palatine,  as  described  in  Tacitus,  Annals  xii.  24. 


i6 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


ordered  to  be  pulled  down.1  Going  straight  on  we 
reach  the  north-eastern  angle  of  the  Palatine,  where 
now  stands  the  arch  of  Constantine,  with  the  Colosseum 
beyond  it,  and  turning  once  more  to  the  left,  we  begin 
to  ascend  a  gentle  slope  which  will  take  us  to  a  ridge 
between  the  Palatine  and  the  Esquiline  2 — another  of 
the  spurs  of  the  plain  beyond — known  by  the  name 
of  the  Yelia.  And  now  we  are  approaching  the  real 
heart  of  the  city. 

At  this  point  starts  the  Sacra  via,3  so  called 
because  it  is  the  way  to  the  most  sacred  spots  of  the 
ancient  Roman  city, — the  temples  of  Yesta  and  the 
Penates,  and  the  Regia,  once  the  dwelling  of  the 
Rex,  now  of  the  Pontifex  Maximus ;  and  it  will  lead 
us,  in  a  walk  of  about  eight  hundred  yards,  through 
the  Forum  to  the  Capitol.  It  varied  in  breadth,  and 
took  by  no  means  a  straight  course,  and  later  on  was 
crowded,  cramped,  and  deflected  by  numerous  temples 
and  other  buildings  ;  but  as  yet,  so  far  as  we  can  guess, 
it  was  fairly  free  and  open.  We  follow  it  and  ascend 
the  slope  till  wTe  come  to  a  point  known  as  the  summa 
sacra  via,  just  where  the  arch  of  Titus  now  stands, 
and  where  then  was  the  temple  of  Jupiter  Stator, 
and  where  also  a  shrine  of  the  public  Penates  and 
another  of  the  Lares  (of  wThich  no  trace  is  now  left) 
warn  us  that  we  are  close  on  the  penetralia  of  the 
Roman  State.  Here  a  way  to  the  left  leads  up  to  the 

1  Cic.  de  Officiis  iii.  16.  66,  and  the  story  there  related. 

3  Strictly  speaking,  the  Oppius  Mons,  or  southern  part  of  the  Esquiline. 

3  See  Lanciani’s  admirable  chapter,  “  A  Walk  through  the  Sacra  Via,”  in 
his  Ruins  and  Excavations  of  Ancient  Rome,  p.  190  foil. 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


i 


i7 


Palatine,  the  residence  then  of  many  of  the  leading 
men  of  Rome,  Cicero  being  one  of  them. 

But  our  attention  is  not  long  arrested  by  these 
objects ;  it  is  soon  riveted  on  the  Forum  below  and 
in  front  of  us,  to  which  the  Sacred  Way  leads  by  a 
downward  slope,  the  Clivus  sacer.  At  the  norths 
western  end  it  is  closed  in  by  the  Capitoline  hill, 
with  its  double  summit,  the  arx  to  the  right,  and 
the  great  temple  of  J upiter,  J uno,  and  Minerva  facing 
south-east  towards  the  Aventine.  It  is  of  this  view 
that  Virgil  must  have  been  thinking  when  he  wrote 
of  the  happy  lot  of  the  countryman  who 

nec  ferrea  iura 

insanumque  forum  aut  populi  tabularia  vidit.1 

For  the  Forum  is  crowded  with  bustling  human 
figures,  intent  on  the  business  of  politics,  or  of  the 
law-courts  (ferrea  iura),  or  of  money-making,  and  just 
beyond  it,  immediately  under  the  Capitol,  are  the 
record-offices  (tabularia)  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The 
whole  Sacra  via  from  this  point  is  crowded ;  here 
Horace  a  generation  later  was  to  meet  his  immortal 
“  bore,”  from  whom  he  only  escaped  when  the 
“  ferrea  iura  ”  laid  a  strong  hand  on  that  terrible 
companion.  Down  below,  at  the  entrance  to  the 
Forum  by  the  arch  of  Fabius  (fornix  Fabiana),  the 
jostling  was  great.  “If  I  am  knocked  about  in 
the  crowd  at  the  arch,”  says  Cicero,  to  illustrate 
a  point  in  a  speech  of  this  time,  “I  do  not  accuse 

1  Georg,  ii.  502.  Virgil,  for  all  his  admiration  of  Rome,  did  not  love  its 
crowds. 


0 


i8 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAf. 


some  one  at  the  top  of  the  via  Sacra,  but  the  man 
who  jostles  me.”  1 

The  Forum — for  from  this  point  we  can  take  it 
all  in,  geologically  and  historically — lies  in  a  deep 
hollow,  to  the  original  level  of  which  excavation  has 
now  at  last  reached.  This  hollow  was  formed  by  a 
stream  which  came  down  between  the  Esquiline  and 
the  Quirinal  beyond  it,  and  made  its  exit  towards 
the  river  on  the  other  side  by  way  of  the  Yelabrum. 
As  the  city  extended  itself,  amalgamating  with 
another  community  on  the  Quirinal,  this  hollow 
became  a  common  meeting-place  and  market,  and  the 
stream  was  in  due  time  drained  by  that  Cloaca  which 
we  saw  debouching  into  the  Tiber  near  the  bridge  we 
crossed.  The  upper  course  of  this  stream,  between 
Esquiline  and  Quirinal,  is  a  densely  populated  quarter 
known  as  the  Argiletum,  and  higher  up  as  the 
Subura,2  where  artisans  and  shops  abounded.  The 
lower  part  of  its  course,  where  it  has  become  an 
invisible  drain,  is  also  a  crowded  street,  the  vicus 
Tuscus,  leading  to  the  Yelabrum,  and  so  to  our 
starting-point  at  the  Forum  Boarium. 

Let  us  now  descend  the  Clivus  sacer,  crossing  to 
the  right-hand  side  of  the  slope,  wdiich  the  via  Sacra 
now  follows,  and  reach  the  Forum  by  the  fornix 
Fabiana.  Close  by  to  our  left  is  the  round  temple  of 
Yesta,  where  the  sacred  fire  of  the  State  is  kept  ever 

1  Cic.  pro  Plancio,  ch.  7.  Cp.  Horace,  Sat.  i.  9  ;  Lucilius,  Frag.  9  (ed. 
Baehrens),  which  last  will  be  quoted  in  another  context. 

2  On  the  vexed  question  of  the  position  of  the  Subura  and  its  histoTj 
see  Wissowa,  Gesammelte  Abhandlungen,  p.  230  foil. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


19 


burning  by  its  guardians,  the  Vestal  Virgins,  and  here 
too  is  their  dwelling,  the  Atrium  Vestae,  and  also 
that  of  the  Pontifex  Maximus  (Regia),  in  whose 
potestas  they  were ;  these  three  buildings,  then 
insignificant  to  look  at,  constituted  the  religious 
focus  of  the  oldest  Rome.1  A  little  farther  again  to 
the  left  is  the  temple  of  Castor  and  the  spring  of 
Juturna,  lately  excavated,  where  the  Twins  watered 
their  steeds  after  the  battle  of  the  lake  Regillus.  In 
front  of  us  we  can  see  over  the  heads  of  the  crowd 
the  Rostra  at  the  farther  end  of  the  Forum,  where  an 
orator  is  perhaps  addressing  a  crowd  ( contio )  on  some 
political  question  of  the  moment,  and  giving  some 
occupation  to  the  idlers  in  the  throng ;  and  to  the 
right  of  the  Rostra  is  the  Comitium  or  assembling- 
place  of  the  people,  with  the  Curia,  the  ancient 
meeting-hall  of  the  senate.  In  Cicero’s  day  the  mere 
shopman  had  been  got  rid  of  from  the  Forum,  and 
his  place  is  taken  by  the  banker  and  money-lender, 
who  do  their  business  in  tabernae  stretching  in  rows 
along  both  sides  of  the  open  space.  Much  public 
business,  judicial  and  other,  is  done  in  the  Basilicae, — 
roofed  halls  with  colonnades,  of  which  there  are 
already  five,  and  a  new  one  is  arising  on  the  south 
side,  of  which  the  ground-plan,  as  it  was  extended 
soon  afterwards  by  Julius  Caesar,  is  now  completely 
laid  bare.  But  it  is  becoming  evident  that  the 
business  of  the  Empire  cannot  be  much  longer  crowded 
into  this  narrow  space  of  the  Forum,  which  is  only 

1  For  excavations  here  see  Lanciani,  op.  cit.  p.  221  ML 


20 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


about  two  hundred  yards  long  by  seventy ;  and  the 
next  two  generations  will  see  new  Fora  laid  out, 
larger  and  more  commodious,  by  Julius  and  Augustus, 
in  the  direction  of  the  Quirinal. 

Now  making  our  way  towards  the  Capitol,  we  pass 
the  famous  temple  or  rather  gate  of  the  double¬ 
headed  Janus,  standing  at  the  entrance  to  the  Forum 
from  the  Argiletum  and  the  Porta  Esquilina ;  then 
the  Comitium  and  Curia  (which  last  was  burnt  by 
the  mob  in  52  B.c.,  at  the  funeral  of  Clodius), 
and  reach  the  foot  of  the  Clivus  Capitolinus,  just 
where  was  (and  is)  the  ancient  underground  prison, 
called  Tullianum,  from  the  old  word  for  a  spring 
(tullus),  the  scene  of  the  deaths  of  Jugurtha  and 
many  noble  captives,  and  of  the  Catilinarian  con¬ 
spirators  on  December  5,  63.  Here  the  via  Sacra 
turns,  in  front  of  the  temple  of  Concordia,  to  ascend 
the  Capitol.  Behind  this  temple,  extending  farther 
under  the  slope,  is  the  Tabularium,  already  mentioned, 
which  is  still  much  as  it  was  then  ;  and  below  us 
to  the  south  is  the  temple  of  Saturnus,  the  treasury 
( aerarium )  of  the  Roman  people.  Thus  at  this  end  of 
the  Forum,  under  the  Capitol,  are  the  whole  set  of 
public  offices,  facing  the  ancient  religious  buildings 
around  the  Vesta  temple  at  the  other  end. 

The  way  now  turns  again  to  the  right,  and  reaches 
the  depression  between  the  two  summits  of  the 
Capitoline  hill.  Leaving  the  arx  on  the  left,  we 
reach  by  a  long  flight  of  steps  the  greatest  of  all 
Roman  temples,  placed  on  a  long  platform  with  solid 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


21 


substructures  of  Etruscan  workmanship,  part  of 
which  is  still  to  be  seen  in  the  garden  of  the  German 
Embassy.  The  temple  of  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus, 
with  his  companions  Juno  and  Minerva,  was  in  a 
very  special  sense  the  religious  centre  of  the  State 
and  its  dominion.  Whatever  view  he  might  take  of 
the  gods  and  their  cults,  every  Roman  instinctively 
believed  that  this  great  Jupiter,  above  all  other 
deities,  watched  over  the  welfare  of  Rome,  and 
when  a  generation  later  Virgil  placed  the  destiny  of 
Rome’s  mythical  hero  in  the  hands  of  Jupiter,  every 
Roman  recognised  in  this  his  own  inherited  con¬ 
viction.  Here,  on  the  first  day  of  their  office,  the 
higher  magistrates  offered  sacrifice  in  fulfilment  of  the 
vows  of  their  predecessors,  and  renewed  the  same 
vows  themselves.  The  consul  about  to  leave  the  city 
for  a  foreign  war  made  it  his  last  duty  to  sacrifice 
here,  and  on  his  return  he  deposited  here  his  booty. 
Here  came  the  triumphal  procession  along  the  Sacred 
Way,  the  conquering  general  attired  and  painted  like 
the  statue  of  the  god  within  the  temple ;  and  upon 
the  knees  of  the  statue  he  placed  his  wreath  of  laurel, 
rendering  up  to  the  deity  what  he  had  himself 
deigned  to  bestow.  Here  too,  from  a  pedestal  on  the 
platform,  a  statue  of  Jupiter  looked  straight  over 
the  Forum,1  the  Curia,  and  the  Comitium  ;  and  Cicero 
could  declare  from  the  Rostra,  and  know  that  in  so 
declaring  he  was  touching  the  hearts  of  his  hearers, 
that  on  that  same  day  on  which  it  had  first  been 


1  Cic.  Cat.  iii.  9.  21  foil. 


22 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


so  placed,  the  machinations  of  Catiline  and  his 
conspirators  had  been  detected.1  “  Ille,  ille  Iupiter 
restitit ;  ille  Capitolium,  ille  haec  templa,  ille  cunctam 
urbem,  ille  vos  omnes  salvos  esse  voluit.” 

The  temple  had  been  destroyed  by  fire  in  the  time 
of  Sulla,  and  its  restoration  was  not  as  yet  finally 
completed  at  the  time  of  our  imaginary  walk.2  It 
faced  towards  the  river  and  the  Aventine,  i.e.  south¬ 
east,  according  to  the  rules  of  augural  lore,  like  all 
Roman  public  buildings  of  the  Republican  period. 
From  the  platform  on  which  it  stands  we  look  down 
on  the  Forum  Boarium,  from  which  we  started, 
connected  with  the  Forum  by  the  Velabrum  and  the 
vicus  Tuscus ;  and  more  to  the  right  below  us  is  the 
Campus  Martius,  with  access  to  the  city  by  that 
Porta  Carmentalis  which  Evander  showed  to  Aeneas. 
This  spacious  exercise-ground  of  Roman  armies  is 
already  beginning  to  be  built  upon ;  in  fact  the 
Circus  Flammius  has  been  there  for  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half,  and  now  the  new  theatre  of 
Pompeius,  the  first  stone  theatre  in  Rome,  rises 
beyond  it  towards  the  Vatican  hill.  But  there  is 
ample  space  left ;  for  it  is  nearly  a  mile  from  the 
Capitol  to  that  curve  of  the  Tiber  above  which  the 
Church  of  St.  Peter  now  stands ;  and  on  this  large 
expanse,  at  the  present  day,  the  greater  part  of  a 
population  of  nearly  half  a  million  is  housed. 

1  Formerly  we  may  assume  that  it  faced  south  or  south-east,  like  the 
temple. 

2  It  was  completed  by  Caesar  in  46  B.c. 


I 


TOPOGRAPHICAL 


23 


I  do  not  propose  to  take  the  reader  farther. 
We  have  been  through  the  heart  of  the  city,  as  it 
was  at  the  close  of  the  Republican  period,  and 
from  the  platform  of  the  great  temple  we  can  see 
all  else  that  we  need  to  keep  in  mind  in  these 
chapters. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  LOWER  POPULATION  (PLEBS  URBANA) 

The  walk  we  have  been  taking  has  led  us  only 
through  the  heart  of  the  city,  in  which  were  the 
public  buildings,  temples,  basilicas,  porticos,  etc., 
of  which  we  hear  so  much  in  Latin  literature.  It 
was  on  the  hills  which  are  spurs  of  the  plain  beyond, 
and  which  look  down  over  the  Forum  and  the  Campus 
Martius,  the  Caelian,  Esquiline,  and  Quirinal,  with 
the  hollows  lying  between  them,  and  also  on  the 
Aventine  by  the  river,  that  the  mass  of  the  population 
lived.  The  most  ancient  fortification  of  completed 
Rome,  the  so-called  Servian  wall  and  agger,  enclosed 
a  singularly  large  space,  larger,  we  are  told,  than 
the  walls  of  any  old  city  in  Italy ; 1  it  is  likely 
that  a  good  part  of  this  space  was  long  unoccupied 
by  houses,  and  served  to  shelter  the  cattle  of  the 
farmers  living  outside,  when  an  enemy  was  threaten¬ 
ing  attack.  But  in  Cicero’s  time,  as  to-day,  all  this 
space  was  covered  with  dwellings ;  and  as  the  centre 
of  the  city  came  to  be  occupied  with  public  buildings, 
erected  on  sites  often  bought  from  private  owners,  the 

1  Beloch,  Bewolkcrung,  p.  382. 

24 


CHAP.  II  THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


25 


houses  were  gradually  pushed  out  along  the  roads 
beyond  the  walls.  Exactly  the  same  process  has 
been  going  on  for  centuries  in  the  University  city  of 
Oxford,  where  the  erection  of  colleges  gradually 
absorbed  the  best  sites  within  the  old  walls,  so  that 
many  of  the  dwelling-houses  are  now  quite  two  miles 
from  the  centre  of  the  city.  The  fact  is  attested  for 
Rome  by  the  famous  municipal  law  of  Julius  Caesar, 
which  directs  that  for  a  mile  outside  the  gates  every 
resident  is  to  look  after  the  repair  of  the  road  in  front 
of  his  own  house.1 

As  a  general  rule,  the  heights  in  Rome  were 
occupied  by  the  better  class  of  residents,  and  the 
hollows  by  the  lower  stratum  of  population.  This 
was  not  indeed  entirely  so,  for  poor  people  no  doubt 
lived  on  the  Aventine,  the  Caelian,  and  parts  of  the 
Esquiline.  But  the  Palatine  was  certainly  an  aristo¬ 
cratic  quarter ;  the  Carinae,  the  height  looking  down 
on  the  hollow  where  the  Colosseum  now  stands,  had 
many  good  houses,  e.g.  those  of  Pompeius  and  of 
Quintus  Cicero,  and  we  know  of  one  man  of  great 
wealth,  Atticus,  who  lived  on  the  Quirinal.2  It  was 
in  the  narrow  hollows  leading  down  from  these 
heights  to  the  Forum,  such  as  the  Subura  between 
Esquiline  and  Quirinal,  and  the  Argiletum  farther 
down  near  the  Forum,  that  we  meet  in  literature 
with  what  we  may  call  the  working  classes ;  the 

1  C.I.L.  i.  206,  and  Dessau,  Inscr.  Lat.  Seledae,  ii.  1.  p.  493. 

2  Cic.  ad  Q.  Fratr.  iii.  1.  14  ;  Suet,  dc  Grammaticis,  15  ;  Corn.  Nepos, 
Atticus,  13. 


26 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Argiletum,  for  example,  was  famous  both  for  its 
booksellers  and  its  shoemakers,1  and  the  Subura  is  the 
typical  street  of  tradesmen.  And  no  doubt  the  big 
lodging-houses  in  which  the  lower  classes  dwelt  were 
to  be  found  in  all  parts  of  Rome,  except  the  strictly 
aristocratic  districts  like  the  Palatine. 

The  whole  free  population  may  roughly  be  divided 
into  three  classes,  of  which  the  first  two,  constituting 
together  the  social  aristocracy,  were  a  mere  handful 
in  number  compared  with  the  third.  At  the 
top  of  the  social  order  was  the  governing  class,  or 
ordo  senatorius :  then  came  the  ordo  equester,  com¬ 
prising  all  the  men  of  business,  bankers,  money¬ 
lenders,  and  merchants  ( negotiatores )  or  contractors 
for  the  raising  of  taxes  and  many  other  purposes 
(publicani).  Of  these  two  upper  classes  and  their 
social  life  we  shall  see  something  in  later  chapters ; 
at  present  we  are  concerned  with  the  “  masses,”  at 
least  320,000  in  number,2  and  the  social  problems 
which  their  existence  presented,  or  ought  to  have 
presented,  to  an  intelligent  Roman  statesman  of 
Cicero’s  time. 

Unfortunately,  just  as  we  know  but  little  of  the 
populous  districts  of  Rome,  so  too  we  know  little  of 
its  industrial  population.  The  upper  classes,  includ¬ 
ing  all  writers  of  memoirs  and  history,  were  not 
interested  in  them.  There  was  no  philanthropist,  no 

1  Hiilsen- Jordan,  Horn.  Topographic,  vol.  i.  part  iii.  p.  323. 

s  This  is  the  number  receiving  corn  gratis  when  Julius  Caesar  reformed 
the  corn-distribution. — Suetonius,  lul.  41. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


2  7 


devoted  inquirer  like  Mr.  Charles  Booth,  to  investi¬ 
gate  their  condition  or  try  to  ameliorate  it.  The 
statesman,  if  he  troubled  himself  about  them  at  all, 
looked  on  them  as  a  dangerous  element  of  society, 
only  to  be  considered  as  human  beings  at  election 
time ;  at  all  other  times  merely  as  animals  that  had 
to  be  fed,  in  order  to  keep  them  from  becoming  an 
active  peril.  The  philosopher,  even  the  Stoic,  whose 
creed  was  by  far  the  most  ennobling  in  that  age, 
seems  to  have  left  the  dregs  of  the  people  quite  out 
of  account ;  though  his  philosophy  nominally  took 
the  whole  of  mankind  into  its  cognisance,  it  believed 
the  masses  to  be  degraded  and  vicious,  and  made  no 
effort  to  redeem  them.1  ^he  Stoic  might  profess  the 
tenderest  feeling  towards  all  mankind,  as  Cicero  did, 
when  moved  by  some  recent  reading  of  Stoic 
doctrine  ;  he  might  say  that  “  men  were  born  for  the 
sake  of  men,  that  each  should  help  the  other,”  or 
that  “  Nature  has  inclined  us  to  love  men,  for  this 
is  the  foundation  of  all  law”;2  but  when  in  actual 
social  or  political  contact  with  the  same  masses 
Cicero  could  only  speak  of  them  with  contempt  or 
disgust.  It  is  a  melancholy  and  significant  fact  that 
what  little  we  do  know  from  literature  about  this 
class  is  derived  from  the  part  they  occasionally 
played  in  riots  and  revolutionary  disorders.  It  is 
fortunately  quite  impossible  that  the  historian  of  the 

1  See  Zeller,  Stoics,  etc.,  Eng.  trans.  p.  255  foil. 

2  Cic.  de  Legibus,  i.  15.  43.  It  was  not  as  yet  possible  to  be  “poor, 
yet  making  many  rich  ”  ;  to  have  nothing  and  yet  to  possess  all  things. 


28 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


future  should  take  account  of  the  life  of  the  educated 
and  wealthy  only ;  but  in  the  history  of  the  past, 
and  especially  of  the  last  three  centuries  B.C.,  we  have 
to  contend  with  this  difficulty,  and  can  only  now  and 
then  find  side-lights  thrown  upon  the  great  mass 
of  mankind.  The  crime,  the  crowding,  the  occasional 
suffering  from  starvation  and  pestilence,  in  the  un¬ 
fashionable  quarters  of  such  a  city  as  Rome,  these 
things  are  hidden  from  us,  and  rarely  even  suggested 
by  the  histories  we  commonly  read. 

The  three  questions  to  which  I  wish  to  make 
some  answer  in  this  chapter  are  :  (l)  how  was  this 
population  housed  ?  (2)  how  was  it  supplied  with 
food  and  clothing  ?  and  (3)  how  was  it  employed  ? 

1.  It  wTas  of  course  impossible  in  a  city  like  Rome 
that  each  man,  married  or  unmarried,  should  have 
his  own  house ;  this  is  not  so  even  in  the  great 
majority  of  modern  industrial  towns,  though  we  in 
England  are  accustomed  to  see  our  comparatively 
well-to-do  artisans  dwelling  in  cottages  spreading 
out  into  the  country.  At  Rome  only  the  wealthy 
families  lived  in  separate  houses  ( domus ),  about 
which  we  shall  have  something  to  say  in  another 
chapter.  The  mass  of  the  population  lived,  or  rather 
ate  and  slept  (for  southern  climates  favour  an  out- 
of-door  life),  in  huge  lodging-houses  called  islands 
(insulae),  because  they  were  detached  from  other 
buildings,  and  had  streets  on  all  sides  of  them,  as 
islands  have  water.1  These  insulae  were  often  three 

1  See  the  definition  of  insula  in  Festus.  n.  111.  and  for  insula  generally 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


29 


or  four  stories  high;1  the  ground -floor  was  often 
occupied  by  shops,  kept  perhaps  by  some  of 
the  lodgers,  and  the  upper  floors  by  single  rooms, 
with  small  windows  looking  out  on  the  street  or 
into  an  interior  court.  The  common  name  for 
such  a  room  was  coenaculum,  or  dining-room,  a 
word  which  seems  to  be  taken  over  from  the 
coenaculum  of  private  houses,  i.e.  an  eating -room 
on  the  first  floor,  where  there  was  one.  Once 
indeed  we  hear  of  an  aedicula  in  an  insula, 
which  was  perhaps  the  equivalent  of  a  modern 
“  flat  ” ;  it  was  inhabited  by  a  young  bachelor 
of  good  birth,  M.  Caelius  Rufus,  the  friend  of 
Cicero,  and  in  this  case  the  insula  was  probably 
one  of  a  superior  kind.2  The  common  lodging- 
house  must  have  been  simply  a  rabbit-warren, 
the  crowded  inhabitants  using  their  rooms  only 
for  eating  and  sleeping,  while  for  the  most  part 
they  prowled  about,  either  idling  or  getting  such 
employment  as  they  could,  legitimate  or  other¬ 
wise. 

In  such  a  life  there  could  of  course  have  been  no 
idea  of  home,  or  of  that  simple  and  sacred  family  life 
which  had  once  been  the  ethical  basis  of  Roman 

Middleton’s  article  “  Domus  ”  in  the  Diet,  of  Antiquities,  ed.  2.  De  Marchi 
{La  Religions  nella  vita  domestica,  i.  p.  80)  compares  the  big  lodging-houses 
of  the  poor  at  Naples. 

1  Cicero  {Leg.  Agr.  ii.  35.  96)  describes  Rome  as  being  (in  comparison  with 
Capua)  “in  montibus  positam  et  convallibus,  coenaculis  (i.e.  upper  rooms) 
sublatam  atque  suspensam,  non  optimis  viis,”  etc.  Vitruv.  ii.  17  is  the 
locus  classicus. 

Cic.  pro  Caelio  17. 


30 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


society.1  When  we  read  Cicero’s  thrilling  language 
about  the  loss  of  his  own  house,  after  his  return  from 
exile,  and  then  turn  to  think  of  the  homeless  crowds 
in  the  rabbit-warrens  of  Rome,  we  can  begin  to  feel 
the  contrast  between  the  wealth  and  poverty  of  that 
day.  “  What  is  more  strictly  protected,”  he  says, 
■“  by  all  religious  feeling,  than  the  house  of  each 
individual  citizen  ?  Here  is  his  altar,  his  hearth, 
here  are  his  Di  Penates :  here  he  keeps  all  the  objects 
of  his  worship  and  performs  all  his  religious  rites  : 
his  house  is  a  refuge  so  solemnly  protected,  that  no 
one  can  be  torn  from  it  by  force.” 2  The  warm¬ 
hearted  Cicero  is  here,  as  so  often,  dreaming  dreams : 
the  “  each  individual  citizen  ”  of  whom  he  speaks  is 
the  citizen  of  his  own  acquaintance,  not  the  vast 
majority,  with  whom  his  mind  does  not  trouble  itself. 

These  insulae  were  usually  built  or  owned  by  men 
of  capital,  and  were  often  called  by  the  names  of 
their  owners.  Cicero,  in  one  of  his  letters,3  incident¬ 
ally  mentions  that  he  had  money  thus  invested ;  and 
we  are  disposed  to  wonder  whether  his  insulae  were 
kept  in  good  repair,  for  in  another  letter  he  happens 
to  tell  his  man  of  business  that  shops  (tabemae) 
belonging  to  him  were  tumbling  down  and  unoccu- 

o  o  o 


pied. 


It  is  more  than  likely  that  many  of  the 


1  In  C.I.L.  vi.  65-67  we  find  a  Bona  Dea  erected  “in  tutelam  insulae,”  i.e. 
a  common  cult  for  all  the  lodgers.  De  Marchi  l.c.  compares  the  common 
shrine  of  the  Neapolitan  lodging-house.  Tutela  is  mentioned  as  a  protecting 
deity  both  of  insulae  and  domus  by  St.  Jerome,  Com.  in  Isaiam,  672. 

2  Cic.  de  Domo  109. 

3  Cic.  ad  Att.  xv.  17  ;  cp.  xiv.  9. 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


31 


SI 

insulae  were  badly  built  by  speculators,  and  liable  to 
collapse.  The  following  passage  from  Plutarch’s  Life 
of  Crassus  suggests  this,  though,  if  Plutarch  is  right, 
Crassus  did  not  build  himself,  but  let  or  sold  his  sites 
and  builders  to  others  :  “  Observing  (in  Sulla’s  time) 
the  accidents  that  were  familiar  at  Rome,  conflagra¬ 
tions  and  tumbling  down  of  houses  owing  to  their 
weight  and  crowded  state,  he  bought  slaves  who  were 
architects  and  builders.  Having  collected  these  to 
the  number  of  more  than  five  hundred,  it  was  his 
practice  to  buy  up  houses  on  fire,  and  houses  next  to 
those  on  fire  :  for  the  owners,  frightened  and  anxious, 
would  sell  them  cheap.  And  thus  the  greater  part 
of  Rome  fell  into  the  hands  of  Crassus  :  but  though 
he  had  so  many  artisans,  he  built  no  house  except 
his  own,  for  he  used  to  say  that  those  who  were  fond 
of  building  ruined  themselves  without  the  help  of  an 
enemy.”1  The  fall  of  houses,  and  their  destruction 
in  the  frequent  fires,  became  familiar  features  of  life 
at  Rome  about  this  time,  and  are  alluded  to  by 
Catullus  in  his  twenty-third  poem,  and  later  on  by 
Strabo  in  his  description  of  Rome  (p.  235).  It  must 
indeed  have  often  happened  that  whole  families  were 
utterly  homeless ; 2  and  in  those  days  there  were  no 
insurance  offices,  no  benefit  societies,  no  philanthropic 
institutions  to  rescue  the  suffering  from  undeserved 
misery.  As  we  shall  see  later  on,  they  were  con- 

1  Plut.  Or  asms  2  :  perhaps  from  Fenestella. 

2  “Donxdentem  in  taberna,”  Asconins,  ed.  Clark,  p.  37.  Cp.  Tacitus, 
Hist.  i.  86,  for  persons  sleeping  in  tabernae. 


32 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAR 


stantly  in  debt,  and  in  the  hands  of  the  money¬ 
lender  ;  and  against  his  extortions  their  judicial 
remedies  were  most  precarious.  But  all  this  is 
hidden  from  our  eyes  :  only  now  and  again  we  can 
hear  a  faint  echo  of  their  inarticulate  cry  for  help. 

2.  The  needs  of  these  poorer  classes  in  respect  of 
food  and  drink  were  very  small ;  it  was  only  the 
vast  number  of  them  that  made  the  supply  difficult. 
The  Italians,  like  the  Greeks,1  were  then  as  now 
almost  entirely  vegetarians ;  cattle  and  sheep  were 
used  for  the  production  of  cheese,  leather,  and  wool, 
or  for  sacrifices  to  the  gods ;  the  only  animal 
commonly  eaten,  until  luxury  came  in  with  increasing 
wealth,  was  the  pig,  and  grain  and  vegetables  were 
the  staple  food  of  the  poor  man,  both  in  town  and 
country.  Among  the  lesser  poems  ascribed  to  Virgil 
there  is  one,  the  Moretum,  which  gives  a  charming 
picture  of  the  food-supply  of  the  small  cultivator  in 
the  country.  He  rises  very  early,  gropes  his  way  to 
the  hearth,  and  stirs  the  embers  into  flame :  then 
takes  from  his  meal-bin  a  supply  of  grain  for  three 
days  and  proceeds  to  grind  it  in  a  hand-mill,  knead 
it  with  water,  shape  it  into  round  cakes  divided  into 
four  parts  like  a  “  hot-cross  bun,”  and,  with  the  help 
of  his  one  female  slave,  to  bake  these  in  the  embers. 
He  has  no  sides  of  smoked  bacon,  says  the  poet, 
hanging  from  his  roof,  but  only  a  cheese,  so  to  add 
to  his  meal  he  goes  into  his  garden  and  gathers 
thence  a  number  of  various  herbs  and  vegetables, 


1  Tucker,  Lift  in  Ancient  Athens,  p.  10. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


33 


which  he  then  makes  into  the  hotch-potch,  or  pot-au- 
feu,  which  gives  the  name  to  the  poem.  This  bit  of 
delicate  genre-painting,  which  is  as  good  in  its  way 
as  anything  in  Crabbe’s  homely  poems,  has  indeed 
nothing  to  tell  us  of  life  in  an  insula  at  Rome ;  but 
it  may  serve  to  show  what  was  the  ordinary  food  of 
the  Italian  of  that  day.1  The  absence  of  the  sides  of 
bacon  (“  durati  sale  terga  suis,”  line  57)  is  interesting. 
No  doubt  the  Roman  took  meat  when  he  could  get 
it ;  but  to  have  to  subsist  on  it,  even  for  a  short  time, 
was  painful  to  him,  and  more  than  once  Caesar 
remarks  on  the  endurance  of  his  soldiers  in  submit¬ 
ting  to  eat  meat  when  corn  was  not  to  be  had.2 

The  corn  which  was  at  this  time  the  staple  food  of 
the  Romans  of  the  city  was  wheat,  and  wheat  of  a 
good  kind ;  in  primitive  times  it  had  been  an  inferior 
species  called  far,  which  survived  in  Cicero’s  day  only 
in  the  form  of  cakes  offered  to  the  gods  in  religious 
ceremonies.  The  wheat  was  not  brought  from  Italy 
or  even  from  Latium ;  what  each  Italian  community 
then  grew  was  not  more  than  supplied  its  own 
inhabitants,3  and  the  same  was  the  case  with  the 
country  villas  of  the  rich,  and  the  huge  sheep-farms 
worked  by  slaves.  By  far  the  greater  part  of  Italy 
is  mountainous,  and  not  well  suited  to  the  production 

1  The  Moretum  may  be  a  translation  from  a  Greek  poet,  perhaps  Par- 
thenius,  but  it  is  certainly  as  well  adapted  to  the  experience  of  Italians, 

2  e.g.  Caesar,  Bell.  Civ.  iii.  47.  Cp.  Tacitus,  Ann.  xiv.  24. 

s  On  this  point  see  Salvioli,  Le  Capitalisme  dans  le  monde  antique,  ch.  vi. 
This  is  a  book  with  many  shortcomings,  but  written  by  an  Italian  who  knows 
his  own  country. 

D 


34 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


of  corn  on  a  large  scale ;  and  for  long  past  other 
causes  had  combined  to  limit  what  production  there 
was.  Transport  too,  whether  by  road  or  river,  was 
full  of  difficulty,  while  on  the  other  hand  a  glance  at 
the  map  will  show  that  the  voyage  for  corn-ships 
between  Rome  and  Sicily,  Sardinia,  or  the  province  of 
Africa  (the  former  dominion  of  Carthage),  was  both 
short  and  easy — far  shorter  and  easier  than  the  voyage 
from  Cisalpine  Gaul  or  even  from  Apulia,  where  the 
peninsula  was  richest  in  good  corn-land.  So  we  are 
not  surprised  to  find  that,  according  to  tradition,  which 
is  fully  borne  out  by  more  certain  evidence,1  corn  had 
been  brought  to  Rome  from  Sicily  as  early  as  492  b.c. 
to  relieve  a  famine,  or  that  since  Sicily,  Sardinia,  and 
Africa  had  become  Roman  provinces,  their  vast  pro¬ 
ductive  capacity  was  utilised  to  feed  the  great  city. 

Nor  indeed  need  we  be  surprised  to  find  that  the 
State  has  taken  over  the  task  of  feeding  the  Roman 
population,  and  of  feeding  it  cheaply,  if  only  -we  are 
accustomed  to  think,  not  merely  to  read,  about  life  in 
the  city  at  this  period.  Nothing  is  more  difficult  for 
the  ordinary  reader  of  ancient  history  than  to  realise 
the  difficulty  of  feeding  large  masses  of  human  beings, 
whether  crowded  in  towns  or  soldiers  in  the  field.  Our 
means  of  transport  are  now  so  easily  and  rapidly  set  in 
action  and  maintained,  that  it  would  need  a  war  with 
some  great  sea -power  to  convince  us  that  London 
or  Glasgow  might,  under  certain  untoward  circum¬ 
stances,  be  starved  ;  and  as  our  attention  has  never 

1  See  the  author’s  Roman  Festivals,  p.  76  (Cerealia). 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


35 


been  drawn  to  the  details  of  food-supply,  we  do  not 
readily  see  why  there  should  have  been  any  such 
difficulty  at  Rome  as  to  call  for  the  intervention  of 
the  State.  Perhaps  the  best  way  to  realise  the  problem 
is  to  reflect  that  every  adult  inhabitant  needed  about 
four  and  a  half  pecks  of  corn  per  month,  or  some  three 
pounds  a  day  ;  so  that  if  the  population  of  Rome  be 
taken  at  half  a  million  in  Cicero’s  time,  a  million  and 
a  half  pounds  would  be  demanded  as  the  daily  con¬ 
sumption  of  the  people.1  I  have  already  said  that 
in  the  last  three  centuries  B.c.  there  was  a  universal 
tendency  to  leave  the  country  for  the  towns ;  and  we 
now  know  that  many  other  cities  besides  Rome  not 
only  felt  the  same  difficulty,  but  actually  used  the 
same  remedy — State  importation  of  cheap  corn.2 
Even  comparatively  small  cities  like  Dyrrhachium  and 
Apollonia  in  Epirus,  as  Caesar  tells  us  while  narrat¬ 
ing  his  own  difficulty  in  feeding  his  army  there,  used 
for  the  most  part  imported  corn.3  And  we  must 
remember  that  while  some  of  the  greatest  cities  on 
the  Mediterranean,  such  as  Alexandria  and  Antioch, 
were  within  easy  reach  of  vast  corn-fields,  this  was 
not  the  case  with  Rome.  Either  she  must  organise 
her  corn-supply  on  a  secure  basis,  or  get  rid  of  her 
swarms  of  poor  inhabitants ;  the  latter  alternative 
might  have  been  possible  if  she  had  been  willing  to 

1  Marquardt,  Staatsverwaltung,  ii.  pp.  107,  110  foil.  A  modius,  which 
=  nearly  a  peck,  contained  about  20  lb.  of  wheat  (Pliny,  N.  E.  xviii.  66). 
Four  and  a  half  modii  x  20  =  90  lb. 

2  Hirschfeld,  Verwaltungsbeamten,  ed.  2,  p.  231 ;  Strabo,  p.  652  (Rhodes). 

3  Caesar,  B.  O.  iii.  42.  3. 


3^ 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


let  them  starve,  but  probably  in  no  other  way.  To 
attempt  to  put  them  out  upon  the  land  again  was 
hopeless  ;  they  knew  nothing  of  agriculture,  and  were 
unused  to  manual  labour,  which  they  despised. 

Thus  ever  since  Rome  had  been  a  city  of  any  size 
it  had  been  the  duty  of  the  plebeian  aediles  to  see 
that  it  was  adequately  supplied  with  corn,  and  in  times 
of  dearth  or  other  difficulty  these  magistrates  had  to 
take  special  measures  to  procure  it.  With  a  popula¬ 
tion  steadily  rising  since  the  war  with  Hannibal,  and 
after  the  acquisition  of  two  corn-growing  provinces, 
to  which  Africa  was  added  in  146  b.c.,  it  was  natural 
that  they  should .  turn  their  attention  more  closely 
to  the  resources  of  these ;  and  now  the  provincial 
governors  had  to  see  that  the  necessary  amount  of 
corn  was  furnished  from  these  provinces  at  a  fixed 
price,  and  that  a  low  one.1  In  123  B.c.  Gaius 
Gracchus  took  the  matter  in  hand,  and  made  it 
a  part  of  his  whole  far-reaching  political  scheme. 
The  plebs  urbana  had  become  a  very  awkward  element 
in  the  calculations  of  a  statesman,  and  to  have  it  in 
a  state  of  starvation,  or  even  fearing  such  a  state,  was 
dangerous  in  the  extreme,  as  every  Roman  states¬ 
man  had  to  learn  in  the  course  of  the  two  following 
centuries.  The  aediles,  we  may  guess,  were  quite 
unequal  to  the  work  demanded  of  them  ;  and  at  times 
victorious  provincial  governors  would  bring  home  great 
quantities  of  corn  and  give  it  away  gratis  for  their 
private  purposes,  with  bad  results  both  economic  and 

1  Marquardt,  op.  cit.  p.  110. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


37 


moral.  Gracchus  saw  that  the  work  of  supply  needed 
a  thorough  organisation  in  regard  to  production, 
transport,  warehousing,  and  finance,  and  set  about  it 
with  a  delight  in  hard  work  such  as  no  Roman  states¬ 
man  had  shown  before,  believing  that  if  the  people 
could  be  fed  cheaply  and  regularly,  they  would  cease 
to  be  “a  troublesome  neighbour.”1  We  do  not 
know  the  details  of  his  scheme  of  organisation  except 
in  one  particular,  the  price  at  which  the  corn  was  to 
be  sold  per  modius  (peck)  :  this  was  to  be  six  and 
one-third  asses,  or  rather  less  than  half  the  normal 
market-price  of  the  day,  so  far  as  it  can  be  made  out. 
Whether  he  believed  that  the  cost  of  production 
could  be  brought  down  to  this  level  by  regularity  of 
demand  and  transport  we  cannot  tell ;  it  seems  at 
any  rate  probable  that  he  had  gone  carefully  into 
the  financial  aspect  of  the  business.2  But  there  can 
hardly  be  a  doubt  that  he  miscalculated,  and  that 
the  result  of  the  law  by  which  he  sought  to  effect  his 
object  was  a  yearly  loss  to  the  treasury,  so  that  after 
his  time,  and  until  his  law  was  repealed  by  Sulla,  the 
people  were  really  being  fed  largely  at  the  expense 
of  the  State,  and  thus  lapsing  into  a  state  of  semi¬ 
pauperism,  with  bad  ethical  consequences. 

One  of  these  consequences  was  that  inconsiderate 
statesmen  would  only  too  readily  seize  the  chance  of 
reducing  the  price  of  the  com  still  lower,  as  was  done 
by  Saturninus  in  100  b.c,,  for  political  purposes.  To 

1  For  Gracchus’  motives  see  a  paper  by  the  present  writer  in  the  English 
Historical  Review  tor  1905,  p.  221  fnl1  a  Cic.  Tusc,  Disp.  iii.  20.  48. 


38 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


prevent  this  Sulla  abolished  the  Gracchan  system  in 
toto;  but  it  was  renewed  in  73  b.c.,  and  in  58  the 
demagogue  P.  Clodius  made  the  distribution  of  corn 
gratuitous.  In  46  Caesar  found  that  no  less  than 
320,000  persons  were  receiving  corn  from  the  State 
for  nothing  ;  by  a  bill,  of  which  we  still  possess  a  part,1 
he  reduced  the  number  to  150,000,  and  by  a  rigid 
system  of  rules,  of  which  we  know  something,  con¬ 
trived  to  ensure  that  it  should  be  kept  at  that  point. 
With  the  policy  of  Augustus  and  his  successors  in 
regard  to  the  corn -supply  ( annona )  I  am  not  here 
concerned ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  observe  that  with 
the  establishment  of  the  Empire  the  plebs  urbana 
ceased  to  be  of  any  importance  in  politics,  and  could 
be  treated  as  a  petted  population,  from  whom  no 
harm  was  to  be  expected  if  they  were  kept  comfort¬ 
able  and  amused.  Augustus  seems  to  have  found 
himself  compelled  to  take  up  this  attitude  towards 
them,  and  he  was  able  to  do  so  because  he  had 
thoroughly  reorganised  the  public  finance  and  knew 
what  he  could  afford  for  the  purpose.  But  in  the 
time  of  Cicero  the  people  were  still  powerful  in 
legislation  and  elections,  and  the  public  finance  was 
disorganised  and  in  confusion  ;  and  the  result  was 
that  the  corn-supply  was  mixed  up  with  politics,2  and 
handled  by  reckless  politicians  in  a  way  that  was 
as  ruinous  to  the  treasury  as  it  was  to  the  moral 

1  Lex  Julia  minicipalis,  1-20,  compared  with  Suetonius,  Jul.  41. 

*  A  good  example  will  be  found  in  Cic.  ad  Att.  iv.  1.  6  foil.  ;  the  first 
letter  written  by  Cicero  after  his  return  from  exile. 


a 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


39 


welfare  of  the  city.  The  whole  story,  from  Gracchus 
onwards,  is  a  wholesome  lesson  on  the  mischief  of 
granting  “outdoor  relief”  in  any  form  whatever, 
without  instituting  the  means  of  inquiry  into  each 
individual  case.  Gracchus’  intentions  were  doubtless 
honest  and  good ;  but  “  ubi  semel  recto  deerratum 
est,  in  praeceps  pervenitur.” 

The  drink  of  the  Roman  was  water,  but  he  mixed 
it  with  wine  whenever  he  had  the  chance.  Fortu¬ 
nately  for  him  he  had  no  other  intoxicating  drink ; 
we  hear  neither  of  beer  nor  spirits  in  Roman  literature. 
Italy  was  well  suited  to  the  cultivation  of  the  vine ; 
and  though  down  to  the  last  century  of  the  Republic 
the  choice  kinds  of  wine  came  chiefly  from  Greece, 
yet  we  have  unquestionable  proof  that  wine  was 
made  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Rome  at  the  very 
outset  of  Roman  history.  In  the  oldest  religious 
calendar1  we  find  two  festivals  called  Vinalia,  one 
in  April  and  the  other  in  August ;  what  exactly  was 
the  relation  of  each  of  them  to  the  operations  of 
viticulture  is  by  no  means  clear,  but  we  know  that 
these  operations  were  under  the  protection  of  Jupiter, 
and  that  his  priest,  the  Flamen  Dialis,  offered  to  him 
the  first-fruits  of  the  vintage.  The  production  of 
rough  wine  must  indeed  have  been  large,  for  we 
happen  to  know  that  it  was  at  times  remarkably 
cheap.  In  250  b.c.,  in  many  ways  a  wonderfully 
productive  year,  wine  was  sold  at  an  as  the  congius, 
which  is  nearly  three  quarts ; 2  under  the  early 

1  See  my  Roman  Festivals,  pp.  85  and  204.  2  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.  xviiL  17. 


4o 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Empire  Columella  (iii.  3.  10)  reckoned  the  amphora 
(nearly  6  gallons)  at  15  sesterces,  i.e.  about  eightpence. 
That  the  common  citizen  did  expect  to  be  able  to 
qualify  his  water  with  wine  seems  proved  by  a  story 
told  by  Suetonius,  that  when  the  people  complained 
to  Augustus  that  the  price  of  wine  was  too  high,  he 
curtly  and  wisely  answered  that  Agrippa  had  but  lately 
given  them  an  excellent  water-supply.1  It  looks  as 
though  they  were  claiming  to  have  wine  as  well  as  grain 
supplied  them  by  the  government  at  a  low  price  or 
gratuitously ;  but  this  was  too  much  even  for  Augustus. 

For  his  water  the  Roman,  it  need  hardly  be  said, 
paid  nothing.  On  the  whole,  at  the  time  of  which 
we  are  speaking  he  was  fairly  well  supplied  with  it ; 
but  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  matters  of  urban 
administration,  it  was  under  Augustus  that  an 
abundant  supply  was  first  procured  and  maintained 
by  an  excellent  system  of  management.  Frontinus, 
to  whose  work  de  Aqueductibus  we  owe  almost  all 
that  we  know  about  the  Roman  water-supply,  tells 
us  that  for  four  hundred  and  forty -one  years  after 
the  foundation  of  the  city  the  Romans  contented 
themselves  with  such  water  as  they  could  get  from 
the  Tiber,  from  wells,  and  from  natural  springs,  and 
adds  that  some  of  the  springs  were  in  his  day  still 
held  in  honour  on  account  of  their  health -giving 
qualities.2  Cicero  describes  Rome,  in  his  idealising 

1  Suet.  Aug.  42. 

5  Frontinus  i.  4.  The  date  of  his  work  is  towards  the  end  of  the  first 
century  a.d. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


41 


way,  as  “  locum  fontibus  abundantem,”  and  twenty- 
three  springs  are  known  to  have  existed  ;  but  as  early 
as  312  B.c.  it  was  found  necessary  to  seek  elsewhere 
for  a  purer  and  more  regular  supply.  More  than  six 
miles  from  Rome,  on  the  via  Collatina,  springs  were 
found  and  utilised  for  this  purpose,  which  have  lately 
been  re-discovered  at  the  bottom  of  some  stone 
quarries ;  and  hence  the  water  was  brought  by 
underground  pipes  along  the  line  of  the  same  road 
to  the  city,  and  through  it  to  the  foot  of  the 
Aventine,  the  plebeian  quarter.  This  was  the  Aqua 
Appia,  named  after  the  famous  censor  Appius 
Claudius  Caecus,  whom  Mommsen  has  shown  to  have 
been  a  friend  of  the  people.1  Forty  years  later 
another  censor,  Manius  Curius  Dentatus,  brought  a 
second  supply,  also  by  an  underground  channel,  from 
the  river  Anio  near  Tibur  (Tivoli),  the  water  of 
which,  never  of  the  first  quality,  was  used  for  the 
irrigation  of  gardens  and  the  flushing  of  drains.  In 
144  b.c.  it  was  found  that  these  two  old  aqueducts 
were  out  of  repair  and  insufficient,  and  this  time  a 
praetor,  Q.  Marcius  Rex  (probably  through  the  influ¬ 
ence  of  a  family  clique),  was  commissioned  to  set 
them  in  order  and  to  procure  a  fresh  supply.  He 
went  much  farther  than  his  predecessors  had  gone 
for  springs,  and  drew  a  volume  of  excellent  and  clear 
cold  water  from  the  Sabine  hills  beyond  Tibur,  thirty- 
six  miles  from  the  city,  which  had  the  highest  repu- 

1  See  Lanciani,  Ruins  and  Excavations,  p.  48  ;  Mommsen,  Hist.  vol.  i. 
Appendix. 


42 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


tation  at  all  times ;  and  for  the  last  six  miles  of  its 
course  it  was  carried  above  ground  upon  a  series  of 
arches.1  One  other  aqueduct  was  added  in  125  b.c., 
the  Aqua  Tepula,  so  called  because  its  water  was 
unusually  warm ;  and  the  whole  amount  of  water 
entering  Rome  in  the  last  century  of  the  Republic  is 
estimated  at  more  than  700,000  cubic  metres  per 
diem,  which  would  amply  suffice  for  a  population  of 
half  a  million.  At  the  present  day  Rome,  with  a 
population  of  450,000,  receives  from  all  sources  only 
379, OOO.'2  Baths,  both  public  and  private,  were 
already  beginning  to  come  into  fashion  ;  of  these 
more  will  be  said  later  on.  The  water  for  drinking 
was  collected  in  large  castella,  or  reservoirs,  and 
thence  distributed  into  public  fountains,  of  which  one 
still  survives — the  “  Trofei  di  Mario,”  in  the  Piazza 
Vittorio  Emmanuele  on  the  Esquiline.3  When  the 
supply  came  to  be  large  enough,  the  owners  of  insulae 
and  domus  were  allowed  to  have  water  laid  on  by 
private  pipes,  as  we  have  it  in  modern  towns ;  but  it 
is  not  certain  when  this  permission  was  first  given. 

3.  But  we  must  return  to  the  individual  Roman 
of  the  masses,  whom  we  have  now  seen  well  supplied 
with  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  try  to  form  some 


1  Frontinus  i.  7,  whose  account  is  confirmed  by  the  recently  discovered 
Epitomes  of  Livy's  lost  books. — Grenfell  and  Hunt,  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri, 
iv.  113. 

2  See  the  useful  table  in  Lanciani,  op.  cit.  58. 

3  This  dates  from  the  reign  of  Domitian.  The  nature  of  the  public 
fountain  may  be  realised  at  Pompeii.  See  Mau,  Pompeii,  its  Life  and  Art, 
p.  224  foil. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


43 


idea  of  the  way  in  which  he  was  employed,  or  earned 
a  living.  This  is  by  no  means  an  easy  task,  for 
these  small  people,  as  we  have  already  seen,  did  not 
interest  their  educated  fellow -citizens,  and  for  this 
reason  we  hear  hardly  anything  of  them  in  the 
literature  of  the  time.  Not  only  a  want  of  phil¬ 
anthropic  feeling  in  their  betters,  but  an  inherited 
contempt  for  all  small  industry  and  retail  dealing, 
has  helped  to  hide  them  away  from  us  :  an  inherited 
contempt,  because  it  is  in  fact  a  survival  from  an 
older  social  system,  when  the  citizen  did  not  need  the 
work  of  the  artisan  and  small  retailer,  but  supplied 
all  his  own  wants  within  the  circle  of  his  household, 
i.e.  his  own  family  and  slaves,  and  produced  on  his 
farm  the  material  of  his  food  and  clothing.  And  the 
survival  was  all  the  stronger,  because  even  in  the  late 
Republic  the  abundant  supply  of  slaves  enabled  the 
man  of  capital  still  to  dispense  largely  with  the 
services  of  the  tradesman  and  artisan. 

Cicero  expresses  this  contempt  for  the  artisan  and 
trading  classes  in  more  than  one  striking  passage. 
One,  in  his  treatise  on  Duties,  is  probably  paraphrased 
from  the  Greek  of  Panaetius,  the  philosopher  who 
first  introduced  Stoicism  to  the  Romans,  and  modified 
it  to  suit  their  temperament,  but  it  is  quite  clear 
that  Cicero  himself  entirely  endorses  the  Stoic  view. 
“  All  gains  made  by  hired  labourers,”  he  says,  “  are 
dishonourable  and  base,  for  what  we  buy  of  them  is 
their  labour,  not  their  artistic  skill :  with  them  the 
very  gain  itself  does  but  increase  the  slavishness  of 


44 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  work.  All  retail  dealing  too  may  be  put  in 
the  same  category,  for  the  dealer  will  gain  nothing 
except  by  profuse  lying,  and  nothing  is  more  dis¬ 
graceful  than  untruthful  huckstering.  Again,  the 
work  of  all  artisans  (opifices)  is  sordid ;  there  can  be 
nothing  honourable  in  a  workshop.”  1 

If  this  view  of  the  low  character  of  the  work 
of  the  artisan  and  retailer  should  be  thought  too 
obviously  a  Greek  one,  let  the  reader  turn  to  the 
description  by  Livy 2 — a  true  gentleman — of  the  low 
origin  of  Terentius  Yarro,  the  consul  who  was  in 
command  at  Cannae ;  he  uses  the  same  language  as 
Cicero.  “  He  sprang  from  an  origin  not  merely 
humble  but  sordid  :  his  father  was  a  butcher,  who 
sold  his  own  meat,  and  employed  his  son  in  this 
slavish  business.”  The  story  may  not  be  true,  and 
indeed  it  is  not  a  very  probable  one,  but  it  well 
represents  the  inherited  feeling  towards  retail  trade  of 
the  Roman  of  the  higher  classes  of  society, — a  feeling 
so  tenacious  of  life,  that  even  in  modern  England, 
where  it  arose  from  much  the  same  causes  as  in  the 
ancient  world,  it  has  only  within  the  last  century 
begun  to  die  out.3 

Yet  in  Rome  these  humble  workers  existed  and 
made  a  living  for  themselves  from  the  very  be¬ 
ginning,  as  far  as  wre  can  guess,  of  real  city  life. 
They  are  the  necessary  and  inevitable  product  of  the 
growth  of  a  town  population,  and  of  the  resulting 

1  Cic.  de  OJficiis,  i.  42.  150.  *  Livy  xxii.  25  ad  fin. 

3  It  is  very  conspicuous,  e.g.,  in  the  novels  of  Jane  Austen. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


45 


division  of  labour.  The  following  passage  from  a 
work  on  industrial  organisation  in  England  may  be 
taken  as  closely  representing  the  same  process  in 
early  Rome : 1  “  The  town  arose  as  a  centre  in  which 
the  surplus  produce  of  many  villages  could  be  profit¬ 
ably  disposed  of  by  exchange.  Trade  thus  became 
a  settled  occupation,  and  trade  prepared  the  way  for 
the  establishment  of  the  handicrafts,  by  furnishing 
capital  for  the  support  of  the  craftsmen,  and  by 
creating  a  regular  market  for  their  products.  It  was 
possible  for  a  great  many  bodies  of  craftsmen, — the 
weavers,  tailors,  butchers,  bakers,  etc.,  to  find  a  liveli¬ 
hood,  each  craft  devoting  itself  to  the  supply  of  a 
single  branch  of  those  wants  which  the  village  house¬ 
hold  had  attempted  very  imperfectly  to  satisfy  by  its 
own  labours.” 

As  in  mediaeval  Europe,  so  in  early  Rome,  the 
same  conditions  produced  the  same  results :  we  find 
the  craftsmen  of  the  town  forming  themselves  into 
gilds,  not  only  for  the  protection  of  their  trade,  but 
from  a  natural  instinct  of  association,  and  providing 
these  gilds,  on  the  model  of  the  older  groups  of 
family  and  gens,  with  a  religious  centre  and  a  patron 
deity.  The  gilds  ( collegia )  of  Roman  craftsmen  were 
attributed  to  Numa,  like  so  many  other  religious 
institutions ;  they  included  associations  of  weavers, 
fullers,  dyers,  shoemakers,  doctors,  teachers,  painters, 
etc.,2  and  were  mainly  devoted  to  Minerva  as  the 


1  G.  Unwin,  Industrial  Organisation,  etc.,  p.  2. 
3  Plutarch,  Numa ,  17  ;  Ovid,  Fasti ,  010 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


46 

deity  of  handiwork.  “  The  society  that  witnessed 
the  coming  of  Minerva  from  Etruria  .  .  .  little 
knew  that  in  her  temple  on  the  Aventine  was  being 
brought  to  expression  the  trade-union  idea.”  1  These 
collegia  opijicum,  most  unfortunately,  pass  entirely 
out  of  our  sight,  until  they  reappear  in  the  age  of 
Cicero  in  a  very  different  form,  as  clubs  used  for 
political  purposes,  but  composed  still  of  the  lowest 
strata  of  the  free  population  ( collegia  sodalicia).2 
The  history  and  causes  of  their  disappearance  and 
metamorphosis  are  lost  to  us ;  but  it  is  not  hard 
to  guess  that  the  main  cause  is  to  be  found  in  the 
great  economic  changes  that  followed  the  Hannibalic 
war, — the  vast  number  of  slaves  imported,  and  the 
consequent  resuscitation  of  the  old  system  of  the 
economic  independence  of  the  great  households ;  the 
decay  of  religious  practice,  which  affected  both  public 
and  private  life  in  a  hundred  different  ways  ;  and  that 
steady  growth  of  individualism  which  is  character¬ 
istic  of  eras  of  town  life,  and  especially  of  the  last 
three  centuries  b.c.  It  is  curious  to  notice  that  by 
the  time  these  old  gilds  emerge  into  light  again  as 
clubs  that  could  be  used  for  political  purposes,  a  new 
source  of  gain,  and  one  that  was  really  sordid,  had 
been  placed  within  the  reach  of  the  Roman  plebs 
urbana  :  it  was  possible  to  make  money  by  your  vote 
in  the  election  of  magistrates.  In  that  degenerate 

1  J.  B.  Carter,  The  Religion  of  Numa,  p.  48. 

2  Marq.  iii.  p.  138.  See  also  Kornemann’s  article  “Collegium”  in  Pauly- 
Wissowa,  Real-Encylcl .,  and  Waltzing,  Corporations  professionelles  chez  let 
Romains,  i.  p.  78  foil. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


47 


age,  when  the  vast  accumulation  of  capital  made  it 
possible  for  a  man  to  purchase  his  way  to  power,  in 
spite  of  repeated  attempts  to  check  the  evil  by 
legislation,  the  old  principle  of  honourable  association 
was  used  to  help  the  small  man  to  make  a  living  by 
choosing  the  unprincipled  and  often  the  incompetent 
to  undertake  the  government  of  the  Empire. 

Apart,  however,  from  such  illegal  means  of  making 
money,  there  was  beyond  doubt  in  the  Rome  of  the  last 
century  B.c.  a  large  amount  of  honest  and  useful  labour 
done  by  free  citizens.  We  must  not  run  away  with  the 
idea  that  the  whole  labour  of  the  city  was  performed 
by  slaves,  who  ousted  the  freeman  from  his  chance 
of  a  living.  There  was  indeed  a  certain  number  of 
public  slaves  who  did  public  work  for  the  State  ; 
but  on  the  whole  the  great  mass  of  the  servile  popula¬ 
tion  worked  entirely  within  the  households  and  on 
the  estates  of  the  rich,  and  did  not  interfere  to  any 
sensible  degree  with  the  labour  of  the  small  freeman. 
As  has  been  justly  observed  by  Salvioli,1  never  at  any 
period  did  the  Roman  proletariat  complain  of  the 
competition  of  slave  labour  as  detrimental  to  its  own 
interests.  Had  there  been  no  slave  labour  there,  the 
small  freeman  might  indeed  have  had  a  wider  field  of 
enterprise,  and  have  been  better  able  to  accumulate 
a  small  capital  by  undertaking  work  for  the  great 
families,  which  was  done,  as  it  was,  by  their  slaves. 
But  he  was  not  aware  of  this,  and  the  two  kinds  of 
labour,  the  paid  and  the  unpaid,  went  on  side  by  side 

1  Le  Capitalisme,  etc.,  p.  144  foil. 


48 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


without  active  rivalry.  No  doubt  slavery  helped  to 
foster  idleness,  as  it  did  in  the  Southern  States  of 
America  before  the  Civil  War;1  no  doubt  there  were 
plenty  of  idle  ruffians  in  the  city,  ready  to  steal,  to 
murder,  or  to  hire  themselves  out  as  the  armed 
followers  of  a  political  desperado  like  Clodius  ;  but 
the  simple  necessities  of  the  life  of  those  who  had  no 
slaves  of  their  own  gave  employment,  we  may  be 
certain,  to  a  great  number  of  free  tradesmen  and 
artisans  and  labourers  of  a  more  unskilled  kind. 

To  begin  with,  we  may  ask  the  pertinent  question, 
how  the  corn  sold  cheap  by  the  State  was  made  into 
bread  for  the  small  consumer.  Pliny  gives  us  very 
valuable  information,  which  we  may  accept  as  roughly 
correct,  that  until  the  year  171  B.c.  there  were  no 
bakers  in  Rome.2  “  The  Quirites,”  he  says,  “  made 
their  own  bread,  which  was  the  business  of  the  women, 
as  it  is  still  among  most  peoples.”  The  demand 
which  was  thus  supplied  by  a  new  trade  was  no  doubt 
caused  by  the  increase  of  the  lower  population  of 
the  city,  by  the  return  of  old  soldiers,  often  perhaps 
unmarried,  and  by  the  manumission  of  slaves,  many 
of  whom  would  also  be  inexperienced  in  domestic  life 
and  its  needs ;  and  we  may  probably  connect  it  with 
the  growth  of  the  system  of  insulae,  the  great  lodging- 
houses  in  which  it  would  not  be  convenient  either  to 
grind  your  corn  or  to  bake  your  bread.  So  the  bakers, 
called  pistores  from  the  old  practice  of  pounding  the 

1  Cairneg,  Slave  Power,  pp.  78,  143  foil.  See  below,  p.  235. 
a  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist,  xviii.  107. 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


49 


grain  in  a  mortar  (pingere ),  soon  became  a  very 
important  and  flourishing  section  of  the  plebs,  though 
never  held  in  high  repute  ;  and  in  connexion  with 
the  distributions  of  com  some  of  them  probably  rose 
above  the  level  of  the  small  tradesman,  like  the  pistor 
redemptor,  Marcus  Yergilius  Eurysaces,  whose  monu¬ 
ment  has  come  down  to  us.1  It  should  be  noted 
that  the  trade  of  the  baker  included  the  grinding  of 
the  corn ;  there  were  no  millers  at  Rome.  This  can 
be  well  illustrated  from  the  numerous  bakers’  shops 
which  have  been  excavated  at  Pompeii.2  In  one  of 
these,  for  example,  we  find  the  four  mills  in  a  large 
apartment  at  the  rear  of  the  building,  and  close 
by  is  the  stall  for  the  donkeys  that  turned  them, 
and  also  the  kneading- room,  oven,  and  store-room. 
Small  bakeries  may  have  had  only  hand-mills,  like 
the  one  with  which  we  saw  the  peasant  in  the 
Moretum  grinding  his  corn ;  but  the  donkey  was 
from  quite  early  times  associated  with  the  business, 
as  we  know  from  the  fact  that  at  the  festival  of 
Vesta,  the  patron  deity  of  all  bakers,  they  were 
decorated  with  wreaths  and  cakes.3 

The  baking  trade  must  have  given  employment 
to  a  large  number  of  persons.  So  beyond  doubt  did 
the  supply  of  vegetables,  which  were  brought  into 
the  city  from  gardens  outside,  and  formed,  after  the 
com,  the  staple  food  of  the  lower  classes.  We  have 

1  O.I.L.  i.  7013.  The  date  is  possibly  pre-  Augustan. 

*  Mau’s  Pompeii,  p.  380. 

3  See  my  Roman  Festivals,  p.  148.  For  the  mills  of  various  kinds  see 
also  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  405. 

E 


50 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


already  seen  in  the  Moretum  the  countryman  adding 
to  his  store  of  bread  by  a  hotch-potch  made  of 
vegetables,  and  the  reader  of  the  poem  will  have 
been  astonished  at  the  number  mentioned,  including 
garden  herbs  for  flavouring  purposes.  The  ancients 
were  fully  alive  to  the  value  of  vegetable  food  and 
of  fruit  as  a  healthy  diet  in  warm  climates,  and 
the  wonderfully  full  information  we  have  on  this 
subject  comes  from  medical  writers  like  Galen,  as  well 
as  from  Pliny’s  Natural  History,  and  from  the  writers 
on  agriculture.  The  very  names  of  some  Roman 
families,  e.g.  the  Fabii  and  Caepiones,  carry  us  back 
to  a  time  when  beans  and  onions,  which  later  on  were 
not  so  much  in  favour,  were  a  regular  part  of  the 
diet  of  the  Roman  people.  The  list  of  vegetables 
and  herbs  which  we  know  of  as  consumed  fills  a 
•whole  page  in  Marquardt’s  interesting  account  of  this 
subject,  and  includes  most  of  those  which  we  use  at 
the  present  day.1  It  was  only  when  the  consumption 
of  meat  and  game  came  in  with  the  growth  of  capital 
and  its  attendant  luxury,  that  a  vegetarian  diet  came 
to  be  at  all  despised.  This  is  another  result  of 
the  economic  changes  caused  by  the  Hannibalic  war, 
and  is  curiously  illustrated  by  the  speech  of  the  cook 
of  a  great  household  in  the  Pseudolus  of  Plautus, 
who  prides  himself  on  not  being  as  other  cooks  are, 
who  make  the  guests  into  beasts  of  the  field,  stuffing 
them  with  all  kinds  of  food  which  cattle  eat,  and 
even  with  things  which  cattle  would  refuse  ! 2  But 

1  Privatlebcn,  p.  409.  2  Pseudolus,  810  folL 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


5i 


we  may  take  it  that  at  all  times  the  Roman  of  the 
lower  class  consumed  fruit  and  vegetables  largely, 
and  thus  gave  employment  to  a  number  of  market- 
gardeners  and  small  purveyors.  Fish  he  did  not  eat ; 
like  meat,  it  was  too  expensive ;  in  fact  fish-eating 
only  came  in  towards  the  end  of  the  republican 
period,  and  then  only  as  a  luxury  for  those  who  could 
afford  to  keep  fish-ponds  on  their  estates.  How  far 
the  supply  of  other  luxuries,  such  as  butchers’  meat, 
gave  employment  to  freemen,  is  not  very  clear ;  and 
perhaps  we  need  here  only  take  account  of  such 
few  other  products,  e.g.  oil  and  wine,  as  were  in 
universal  demand,  though  not  always  procurable  by 
the  needy.  There  were  plenty  of  small  shops  in 
Rome  where  these  things  were  sold ;  we  have  a 
picture  of  such  a  shop  ( caupona )  in  another  of  the 
minor  Yirgilian  poems,  the  Copa,  i.e.  hostess,  or  per¬ 
haps  in  this  case  the  woman  who  danced  and  sang 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  guests.  She  plied  her 
trade  in  a  smoky  tavern  (fumosa  taberna),  all  the 
contents  of  which  are  charmingly  described  in  the 
poem.1 

Let  us  now  see  how  the  other  chief  necessity  of 
human  fife,  the  supply  of  clothing,  gave  employment 
to  the  free  Roman  shopkeeper. 

The  clothing  of  the  whole  Roman  population  was 
originally  woollen  ;  both  the  outer  garment,  the  toga, 
and  the  inner  ( tunica )  were  of  this  material,  and  the 

1  Cp.  the  uncta  popina  of  Horace,  Epist.  i.  14.  21  foil.  Scene  in  a  wine¬ 
shop  at  Pompeii,  Mau,  p.  395. 


52 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


sheep  which  supplied  it  were  pastured  well  and 
conveniently  in  all  the  higher  hilly  regions  of  Italy. 
Other  materials,  linen,  cotton,  and  silk,  came  in  later 
with  the  growth  of  commerce,  but  the  manufacture 
of  these  into  clothing  was  chiefly  carried  on  by  slaves 
in  the  great  households,  and  we  need  not  take  any 
account  of  them  here.  The  preparation  of  wool  too 
was  in  well  regulated  households  undertaken  even 
under  the  Empire  by  the  women  of  the  family, 
including  the  materfamilias  herself,  and  in  many  an 
inscription  we  find  the  lanijicium  recorded  as  the 
honourable  practice  of  matrons.1  But  as  in  the  case 
of  food,  so  with  the  simple  material  of  clothing,  it 
was  soon  found  impossible  in  a  city  for  the  poorer 
citizens  to  do  all  that  was  necessary  within  their 
own  houses ;  this  is  proved  conclusively  by  the 
mention  of  gilds  of  fullers2  ( fullones )  among  those 
traditionally  ascribed  to  Numa.  Fulling  is  the 
preparation  of  cloth  by  cleansing  in  water  after  it 
has  come  from  the  loom ;  but  the  fuller’s  trade  of 
the  later  republic  probably  often  comprised  the 
actual  manufacture  of  the  wool  for  those  who  could 
not  do  it  themselves.  He  also  acted  as  the  washer 
of  garments  already  in  use,  and  this  was  no  doubt  a 
very  important  part  of  his  business,  for  in  a  warm 
climate  heavy  woollen  material  is  naturally  apt  to 
get  frequently  impure  and  unwholesome.  Soap  was 

1  See,  e.g.,  the  Laudatio  Turiae,  C.I.L.  vi.  i.  1527,  line  30. 

3  Only  very  rich  families  employed  their  own  fullers. — Marq.  Privat- 
Uben,  p.  512. 


n 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


53 


not  known  till  the  first  century  of  the  Empire,  and 
the  process  of  cleansing  was  all  the  more  lengthy 
and  elaborate ;  the  details  of  the  process  are  known 
to  us  from  paintings  at  Pompeii,  where  they  adorn 
the  walls  of  fulleries  which  have  been  excavated. 
A  plan  of  one  of  them  will  be  found  in  Mau’s 
Pompeii,  p.  388.  The  ordinary  woollen  garments 
were  simply  bleached  white,  not  dyed ;  and  though 
dyers  are  mentioned  among  the  ancient  gilds  by 
Plutarch,  it  is  probable  that  he  means  chiefly  fullers 
by  the  Greek  word 

Of  the  manufacture  of  leather  we  do  not  know  so 
much.  This,  like  that  of  wool,  must  have  originally 
been  carried  on  in  the  household,  but  it  is  mentioned 
as  a  trade  as  early  as  the  time  of  Plautus.1  The 
shoemakers’  business  was,  however,  a  common  one 
from  the  earliest  times,  probably  because  it  needs 
some  technical  skill  and  experience  ;  the  most  natural 
division  of  labour  in  early  societies  is  sure  to  produce 
this  trade.  The  shoemakers’  gild  was  among  the 
earliest,  and  had  its  centre  in  the  atrium  sutorium ; 2 
and  the  individual  shoemakers  carried  on  their  trade 
in  booths  or  shops.  The  Roman  shoe,  it  may  be 
mentioned  here,  was  of  several  different  kinds, 
according  to  the  sex,  rank,  and  occupation  of  the 
wearer ;  but  the  two  most  important  sorts  were  the 
calceus,  the  shoe  worn  with  the  toga  in  the  city,  and 

1  Menaechmi,  404  :  this  may,  however,  be  only  a  translation  from  the 
Greek. 

2  C.I.L.  i.  p.  389. 


54 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  mark  of  the  Roman  citizen  ;  and  the  pero  or  high 
boot,  which  was  more  serviceable  in  the  country. 

Among  the  old  gilds  were  also  those  of  the  smiths 
( fabri  ferrarii )  and  the  potters  ( Jiguli ),  but  of  these 
little  need  be  said  here,  for  they  were  naturally  fewer 
in  number  than  the  vendors  of  food  and  clothing, 
and  the  raw  material  for  their  work  had,  in  later 
times  at  least,  to  be  brought  from  a  distance.  The 
later  Romans  seem  to  have  procured  their  iron-ore 
from  the  island  of  Elba  and  Spain,  Gaul,  and  other 
provinces,1  and  to  have  imported  ware  of  all  kinds, 
especially  the  finer  sorts,  from  various  parts  of  the 
Empire ;  the  commoner  kinds,  such  as  the  dolia  or 
large  vessels  for  storing  wine  and  oil,  were  certainly 
made  in  Rome  in  the  second  century  b.c.,  for  Cato 
in  his  book  on  agriculture 2  remarks  that  they  could 
be  best  procured  there.  But  both  these  manufactures 
require  a  certain  amount  of  capital,  and  we  may 
doubt  whether  the  free  population  was  largely 
employed  in  them ;  we  know  for  certain  that  in  the 
early  Empire  the  manufacture  of  ware,  tiles,  bricks, 
etc.,  was  carried  on  by  capitalists,  some  of  them  of 
noble  birth,  including  even  Emperors  themselves,  and 
beyond  doubt  the  “  hands  ”  they  employed  were 
chiefly  slaves.3 

But  industries  of  this  kind  may  serve  to  remind 

1  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  693  and  reff. 

2  Cato,  de  rc  rustica,  135  ;  a  very  interesting  chapter,  which  shows  that 
of  the  farmer’s  “plant,”  clothing,  rugs,  carts  as  well  as  dolia,  were  best 
purchased  at  Rome. 

3  Marq.  Privatleben,  p.  645. 


a 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


55 


as  of  another  kind  of  employment  in  which  the  lower 
classes  of  Rome  and  Ostia  may  have  found  the  means 
of  making  a  living.  The  importation  of  raw  materials, 
and  that  of  goods  of  all  kinds,  which  was  constantly 
on  the  increase  throughout  Roman  history,  called  for 
the  employment  of  vast  numbers  of  porters,  carriers, 
and  what  we  should  call  dock  hands,  working  both 
at  Ostia,  where  the  heavier  ships  were  unladed  or 
relieved  of  part  of  their  cargoes  in  order  to  enable 
them  to  come  up  the  Tiber,1  and  also  at  the  wharves 
at  Rome  under  the  Aventine.  We  must  also  re¬ 
member  that  almost  all  porterage  in  the  city  had  to 
be  done  by  men,  with  the  aid  of  mules  or  donkeys ; 
the  streets  were  so  narrow  that  in  trying  to  picture 
what  they  looked  like  we  must  banish  from  our 
minds  the  crowds  of  vehicles  familiar  in  a  modern 
city.  Julius  Caesar,  in  his  regulations  for  the 
government  of  the  city  of  Rome,  forbade  waggons 
to  be  driven  in  the  streets  in  the  day-time.2  Even 
supposing  that  a  large  amount  of  porterage  was  done 
by  slaves  for  their  masters,  we  may  reasonably  guess 
that  free  labour  was  also  employed  in  this  way  at 
Rome,  as  was  certainly  the  case  at  Ostia,  and  also 
at  Pompeii,  where  the  pack -carriers  ( saccarii )  and 
mule-drivers  ( muliones )  are  among  the  corporations 
of  free  men  who  have  left  in  the  form  of  graffiti 
appeals  to  voters  to  support  a  particular  candidate 
for  election  to  a  magistracy.3 

1  Strabo,  p.  231.  2  Lex  Julia  Municipalis,  line  56  foil. 

*  Mau,  Pompeii,  p.  377. 


56 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Thus  we  may  safely  conclude  that  there  was  a 
very  considerable  amount  of  employment  in  Rome 
available  for  the  poorer  citizens,  quite  apart  from  the 
labour  performed  by  slaves.  But  before  closing  this 
chapter  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  the  precarious 
conditions  under  which  that  employment  was  carried 
on,  as  compared  with  the  industrial  conditions  of  a 
modern  city.  It  is  true  enough  that  the  factory 
system  of  modern  times,  with  the  sweating,  the  long 
hours  of  work,  and  the  unwholesome  surroundings  of 
our  industrial  towns,  has  produced  much  misery, 
much  physical  degeneracy ;  and  we  have  also  the 
problem  of  the  unemployed  always  with  us.  But 
there  were  two  points  in  which  the  condition  of  the 
free  artisan  and  tradesman  at  Rome  was  far  worse 
than  it  is  with  us,  and  rendered  him  liable  to  an 
even  more  hopeless  submersion  than  that  which  is 
too  often  the  fate  of  the  modem  wage-earner. 

First,  let  us  consider  that  markets,  then  as  now, 
were  liable  to  fluctuation, — probably  more  liable  then 
than  now,  because  the  supply  both  of  food  and  of 
the  raw  material  of  manufacture  was  more  precarious 
owing  to  the  greater  difficulties  of  conveyance. 
Trade  would  be  bad  at  times,  and  many  things  might 
happen  which  would  compel  the  man  with  little  or 
no  capital  to  borrow  money,  which  he  could  only  do 
on  the  security  of  his  stock,  or  indeed,  as  the  law  of 
Rome  still  recognised,  of  his  person.  Money-lenders 
were  abundant,  as  we  shall  find  in  the  next  chapter, 
interest  was  high,  and  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  a 


II 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


57 


money-lender  was  only  another  step  on  the  way  to 
destruction.  At  the  present  day,  if  a  tradesman  fails 
in  business,  he  can  appeal  to  a  merciful  bankruptcy 
law,  which  gives  him  every  chance  to  satisfy  his 
creditors  and  to  start  afresh ;  or  in  the  case  of  a 
single  debt,  he  can  be  put  into  a  county  court  where 
every  chance  is  given  bim  to  pay  it  within  a  reason¬ 
able  time.  All  this  machinery,  most  of  which  (to  the 
disgrace  of  modern  civilisation)  is  quite  recent  in 
date,  was  absent  at  Rome.  The  only  magistrates 
administering  the  civil  law  were  the  praetors,  and 
though  since  the  reforms  of  Sulla  there  were  usually 
eight  of  these  in  the  city,  we  can  well  imagine  how 
hard  it  would  be  for  the  poor  debtor  in  a  huge  city 
to  get  his  affairs  attended  to.  Probably  in  most 
cases  the  creditor  worked  his  will  with  him,  took 
possession  of  his  property  without  the  interference  of 
the  law,  and  so  submerged  him,  or  even  reduced  him 
to  slavery.  If  he  chose  to  be  merciful  he  could  go 
to  the  praetor,  and  get  what  was  called  a  missio 
in  bona,  i.e.  a  legal  right  to  take  the  whole  of  his 
debtor’s  property,  waiving  the  right  to  his  person. 
And  it  must  be  noted  that  no  more  humane  law 
of  bankruptcy  was  introduced  until  the  time  of 
Augustus.  No  wonder  that  at  least  three  times  in 
the  last  century  of  the  Republic  there  arose  a  cry  for 
the  total  abolition  of  debts  ( tabulae  novae) :  in  88  b.c., 
after  the  Social  War;  in  63,  during  Cicero’s  consul¬ 
ship,  when  political  and  social  revolutionary  projects 
were  combined  in  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline ;  and  in 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


58 

48,  when  the  economic  condition  of  Italy  had  been 
disturbed  by  the  Civil  War,  and  Caesar  had  much 
difficulty  in  keeping  unprincipled  agitators  from 
applying  violent  and  foolish  remedies.  But  to  this 
we  shall  return  in  the  next  chapter. 

Secondly,  let  us  consider  that  in  a  large  city  of 
to-day  the  person  and  property  of  all,  rich  or  poor, 
are  adequately  protected  by  a  sound  system  of  police, 
and  by  courts  of  first  instance  which  are  sitting  every 
day.  Assault  and  murder,  theft  and  burglary,  are 
exceptional.  It  might  be  going  too  far  to  say  that 
at  Rome  they  were  the  rule ;  but  it  is  the  fact  that 
in  what  we  may  call  the  slums  of  Rome  there  was  no 
machinery  for  checking  them.  No  such  machinery 
had  been  invented,  because  according  to  the  old  rules 
of  law,  still  in  force,  a  father  might  punish  his 
children,  a  master  his  slaves,  and  a  murderer  or  thief 
might  be  killed  by  his  intended  victim  if  caught 
red-handed.  This  rude  justice  would  suffice  in  a 
small  city  and  a  simple  social  system ;  but  it  would 
be  totally  inadequate  to  protect  life  and  property  in 
a  huge  population,  such  as  that  of  the  Rome  of  the 
last  century  b.c.  Since  the  time  of  Sulla  there  had 
indeed  been  courts  for  the  trial  of  crimes  of  violence, 
and  at  all  times  the  consuls  with  their  staff  of 
assistants  had  been  charged  with  the  peace  of  the 
city ;  but  we  may  wrell  ask  whether  the  poor  Roman 
of  Cicero’s  day  could  really  benefit  either  by  the 
consular  imperium  or  the  action  of  the  Sullan  courts. 
A  slave  was  the  object  of  his  master’s  care,  and  theft 


n 


THE  LOWER  POPULATION 


59 


from  a  slave  was  theft  from  his  owner, — if  injured 
or  murdered  satisfaction  could  be  had  for  him.  But 
in  that  age  of  slack  and  sordid  government  it  is  at 
least  extremely  doubtful  whether  either  the  person  or 
the  property  of  the  lower  class  of  citizen  could  be 
said  to  have  been  properly  protected  in  the  city. 
And  the  same  anarchy  prevailed  all  over  Italy,— 
from  the  suburbs  of  Rome,  infested  by  robbers,  to  the 
sheep-farm  of  the  great  capitalist,  where  the  traveller 
might  be  kidnapped  by  runaway  slaves,  to  vanish 
from  the  sight  of  men  without  leaving  a  trace  of 
his  fate. 

It  is  the  great  merit  of  Augustus  that  he  made 
Rome  not  only  a  city  of  marble,  but  one  in  which 
the  person  and  property  of  all  citizens  were  fairly 
secure.  By  a  new  and  rational  bankruptcy  law,  and 
by  a  well -organised  system  of  police,  he  made  life 
endurable  even  for  the  poorest.  If  he  initiated  a 
policy  which  eventually  spoilt  and  degraded  the 
Roman  population,  if  he  failed  to  encourage  free 
industry  as  persistently  as  it  seems  to  us  that  he 
might  have  done,  he  may  perhaps  be  in  some  degree 
excused,  as  knowing  the  conditions  and  difficulties  of 
the  problem  before  him  better  than  we  can  know 
them. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS  AND  THEIR  METHODS 

The  highest  class  in  the  social  scale  at  Rome  was 
divided,  roughly  rather  than  exactly,  into  two 
sections,  according  as  they  did  or  did  not  aim  at 
being  elected  to  magistracies  and  so  entering  the 
senate.  To  the  senatorius  ordo,  which  will  be  dealt 
with  in  the  next  chapter,  belonged  all  senators,  and 
all  sons  of  senators  whether  or  no  they  had  as  yet 
been  elected  to  the  quaestorship,  which  after  Sulla 
was  the  magistracy  qualifying  for  the  senate.  But 
outside  the  senatorial  ranks  there  wTere  numbers  of 
wealthy  and  well  educated  men,  most  of  whom  were 
engaged  in  one  way  or  another  in  business ;  by 
which  term  is  here  meant,  not  so  much  trading  and 
mercantile  operations,  as  banking,  money-lending,  the 
undertaking  of  State  contracts,  and  the  raising  of 
taxes.  The  general  name  for  this  class  was,  strange 
to  say,  equites,  or  knights,  as  they  are  often  but 
unfortunately  called  in  modern  histories  of  Rome. 
They  were  in  fact  at  this  time  the  most  unmilitary 
part  of  the  population,  and  they  inherited  the  title 
only  because  the  property  qualification  for  the  equites 

60 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS  61 

equo  privato,  i.e.  the  cavalry  who  served  with  their 
own  horses,  had  been  taken  as  the  qualification  also 
for  equestrian  judices,  to  whom  Gaius  Gracchus  had 
given  the  decision  of  cases  in  the  quaestio  de  repe- 
tundis.1  This  law  of  Gracchus  had  had  the  result  of 
constituting  an  ordo  equester  alongside  of  the  ordo 
senatorius,  with  a  property  qualification  of  400,000 
sesterces,  or  about  £3200,  not  of  income  but  of 
capital.  Any  one  who  had  this  sum  could  call 
himself  an  eques,  provided  he  were  not  a  senator, 
even  if  he  had  never  served  in  the  cavalry  or 
mounted  a  horse. 

We  are  concerned  here  with  the  business  which 
these  men  carried  on,  not  with  their  history  as  a 
body  in  the  State  ;  this  latter  difficult  subject  has 
been  handled  by  Dr.  Greenidge  in  his  Roman  Public 
Life ,  and  by  many  other  writers.  We  have  to  take 
them  here  as  the  representatives  of  capital  and  the 
chief  uses  to  which  it  was  put  in  the  age  of  Cicero ; 
for,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  then  doing  by  far 
the  greatest  part  of  the  money-making  of  the  Empire. 
They  were  not  indeed  always  doing  it  for  themselves ; 
they  often  represented  men  of  senatorial  rank,  and 
acted  as  their  agents  in  the  investment  of  money  and 
in  securing  the  returns  due.  For  the  senator  was  not 
allowed,  by  the  strict  letter  of  the  law,  to  engage  in 
business  which  would  take  him  out  of  Italy ; 2  his 
services  were  needed  at  home,  and  if  indeed  he  had 


1  See  Greenidge,  Roman  Public  Life,  p.  225. 
a  Lex  Claudia  ;  Livy  xxi.  63. 


62 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


performed  his  proper  work  with  industry  and  energy 
he  never  could  have  found  time  to  travel  on  his  own 
business.  At  the  time  of  which  we  are  speaking 
there  were  ways  in  which  he  could  escape  from  his 
duties, — ways  only  too  often  used ;  but  many  sena¬ 
tors  did  undoubtedly  employ  members  of  the  eques¬ 
trian  order  to  transact  their  business  abroad,  so  that 
it  is  not  untrue  to  say  that  the  equites  had  in  their 
hands  almost  the  whole  of  the  monetary  business  of 
the  Empire. 

The  property  qualification  may  seem  to  us  small 
enough,  but  it  is  of  course  no  real  index  to  the 

O  7 

amount  of  capital  which  a  wealthy  eques  might 
possess.  Nothing  is  more  astonishing  in  the  history 
of  the  last  century  of  the  republic  than  the  vast  sums 
of  money  in  the  hands  of  individuals,  and  the 
enormous  sums  lent  and  borrowed  in  private  by  the 
men  whose  names  are  familiar  to  us  as  statesmen. 
It  is  told  of  Caesar  that  as  a  very  young  man 
he  owed  a  sum  equivalent  to  about  £280,000  ;  of 
Crassus  that  he  had  200  million  sesterces  invested  in 
land  alone.1  Cicero,  though  from  time  to  time  in 
difficulties,  always  found  it  possible  to  borrow  the 
large  sums  which  he  spent  on  houses,  libraries,  etc. 
These  are  men  of  the  ordo  senatorius ;  of  the  equites 
proper,  the  men  who  dealt  rather  in  lending  than 
borrowing,  we  have  not  such  explicit  accounts,  because 
they  were  not  in  the  same  degree  before  the  public. 
But  of  Atticus,  the  type  of  the  best  and  highest 

5  Plut.  Crassus,  2  ;  Pliny,  N.  H.  xxxiii.  134  :  equivalent  to  about  £160,000. 


m  THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS  63 

section  of  the  ordo  equester,  and  of  the  amount  and 
the  sources  of  his  wealth,  we  happen  to  know  a  good 
deal  from  the  little  biography  of  him  written  by  his 
contemporary  and  friend  Cornelius  Nepos,  taken  to¬ 
gether  with  Cicero’s  numerous  letters  to  him.  His 
father  had  left  him  the  moderate  fortune  of  £16,000. 
With  this  he  bought  land,  not  in  Italy  but  in  Epirus, 
where  it  was  probably  to  be  had  cheap.  The  profits 
arising  from  this  land,  with  which  he  took  no  doubt 
much  trouble  and  pains,  he  invested  again  in  other 
ways.  He  lent  money  to  Greek  cities :  to  Athens  indeed 
without  claiming  any  interest ;  to  Sicy on  without  much 
hope  of  repayment ;  but  no  doubt  to  many  others 
at  a  large  profit.  He  also  undertook  the  publish¬ 
ing  of  books,  buying  slaves  who  were  skilled  copyists  ; 
and  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  ways,  his  friendship 
was  of  infinite  value  to  Cicero.  When  we  reflect 
that  every  highly  educated  man  at  this  time  owned  a 
library  and  wished  to  have  the  last  new  book,  we  can 
understand  how  even  this  business  might  be  extensive 
and  profitable,  and  are  not  astonished  to  find  Cicero 
asking  Atticus  to  see  that  copies  of  his  Greek  book 
on  his  own  consulship  were  to  be  had  in  Athens  and 
other  Greek  towns.1  This  shrewd  man  also  invested 
in  gladiators,  whom  he  could  let  out  at  a  profit,  as  no 
doubt  he  would  let  out  his  library  slaves.2  Lastly, 
he  owned  houses  in  Rome ;  in  fact  he  must  have 
been  making  money  in  many  different  ways,  spending 
but  little  himself,  and  attending  personally  and  in- 


1  Cic.  ad  Att.  ii.  1.  2. 


2  lb.  iv.  4. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


64 

defatigably  to  all  his  business,  as  indeed  with  true  and 
disinterested  friendship  he  attended  to  that  of  Cicero. 
In  him  we  see  the  best  type  of  the  Roman  business¬ 
man  :  not  the  bloated  millionaire  living  in  coarse 
luxury,  but  the  man  who  loved  to  be  always  busy  for 
himself  or  his  friends,  and  whose  knowledge  of  men 
and  things  was  so  thorough  that  he  could  make  a 
fortune  without  anxiety  to  himself  or  discomfort  to 
others.  What  amount  of  capital  he  realised  in  these 
various  ways  we  do  not  know,  but  the  mass  of  his 
fortune  came  to  him  after  he  had  been  pursuing  them 
for  many  years,  in  the  form  of  a  legacy  from  an  uncle. 
This  uncle  was  a  typical  capitalist  and  money-lender 
of  a  much  lower  and  coarser  type  than  his  nephew ; 
Nepos  aptly  describes  him  as  “  familiarem  L.  Luculli, 
divitem,  difficillima  natura.”  The  nephew  was  the 
only  man  who  could  get  on  with  this  Peter  Feather- 
stone  of  Roman  life,  and  this  simple  fact  tells  us  as 
much  about  the  character  and  disposition  of  Atticus 
as  anything  in  Cicero’s  correspondence  with  him. 
The  happy  result  was  that  his  uncle  left  him  a  sum 
which  we  may  reckon  at  about  £80,000  (centies 
sestertium),1  and  henceforward  he  may  be  reckoned,  if 
not  as  a  millionaire,  at  any  rate  as  a  man  of  large 
capital,  soundly  invested  and  continually  on  the 
increase. 

There  is  no  doubt  then  as  to  the  fact  of  the 
presence  of  capital  on  a  large  scale  in  the  Rome  of  the 
last  century  B.c.,  or  of  the  business  talents  of  many 

1  Corn.  Nepos,  Atticus,  5. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


65 

of  its  holders,  or  again  of  the  many  profitable  ways  in 
which  it  might  be  invested.  But  in  order  to  learn  a 
little  more  of  the  history  of  capital  at  Rome,  which  is 
of  the  utmost  importance  for  a  proper  understanding 
not  only  of  the  economic,  but  of  the  social  and  ethical 
characteristics  of  the  age,  it  is  necessary  to  go  as  far 
back  as  the  war  with  Hannibal  at  least. 

That  there  had  been  surplus  capital  in  the  hands 
of  individuals  long  before  the  war  with  Hannibal  is 
a  well  known  fact,  proved  by  the  old  Roman  law  of 
debt,  and  by  the  traditions  of  the  unhappy  relations 
of  debtor  and  creditor.  But  in  order  not  to  go  back 
too  far,  we  may  notice  a  striking  fact  which  meets 
us  at  the  very  outset  of  that  momentous  war.  In 
215  B.C.,  and  again  the  next  year,  the  treasury  was 
almost  empty ;  then  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  we 
know,  private  individuals  came  to  the  rescue,  and 
lent  large  sums  to  the  State  ; 1  these  were  partners  in 
certain  associations  to  be  described  later  on  in  this 
chapter,  which  had  made  money  by  undertaking  State 
contracts  in  the  previous  wars.  The  presence  of 
Hannibal  in  Italy  strained  the  resources  of  the  State 
to  the  utmost  in  every  w*ay ;  it  cut  the  Romans  off 
from  their  supply  of  the  precious  metals,  forced  them 
to  reduce  the  weight  of  the  as  to  one  ounce,  and, 
curiously  enough,  also  to  issue  gold  coins  for  the  first 
time, — a  measure  probably  taken  on  account  of  the 
dearth  of  silver, — and  to  make  use  of  the  uncoined 
gold  in  the  treasury  or  in  private  hands.  At  the  end 

1  Livy  xxiii.  49. 


F 


66 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


of  the  war  the  supply  of  silver  was  recovered  ;  hence¬ 
forward  all  reckonings  were  made  in  silver,  and  the 
gold  coinage  was  not  long  continued. 

At  this  happy  time,  when  Rome  felt  that  she 
could  breathe  again  after  the  final  defeat  of  her 
deadly  enemy,  began  the  great  inpouring  of  wealth 
of  which  the  capitalism  of  Cicero’s  time  is  the  direct 
result.  The  chief  sources  of  this  wealth,  so  far 
as  the  State  was  concerned,  were  the  indemnities 
paid  by  conquered  peoples,  especially  Carthage  and 
Antiochus  of  Syria,  and  the  booty  brought  home  by 
victorious  generals.  Of  these  Livy  has  preserved 
explicit  accounts,  and  the  best  example  is  perhaps 
that  of  the  booty  brought  by  Scipio  Asiaticus  from 
Asia  Minor  in  189  B.c.,  of  which  Pliny  remarks  that 
it  first  introduced  luxury  into  Italy.1  It  has  been 
roughly  computed  that  the  total  amount  from  in¬ 
demnities  may  be  taken  at  six  million  of  our  pounds, 
in  the  period  of  the  great  wars  of  the  second  century 
b.c. ,  and  from  booty  very  much  the  same  sum. 
Besides  this  we  have  to  take  account  of  the  produce 
of  the  Spanish  silver  mines,  of  which  the  Romans 
came  into  possession  with  the  Carthaginian  dominions 
in  Spain  ;  the  richest  of  these  were  near  Carthago 
Nova,  and  Polybius  tells  us  that  in  his  day  they 
employed  40,000  miners,  and  produced  an  immense 
revenue.2 

1  Pliny,  N.  IT.  xxxiii.  148  ;  Livy  xxxvii.  59. 

2  Polyb.  xxxiv.  9,  quoted  by  Strabo,  p.  148.  Cp.  Livy  xlv.  18  for  valuabl* 
mines  in  Macedonia. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


67 


All  this  went  into  the  aerarium,  except  what 
was  distributed  out  of  the  booty  to  the  soldiers, 
both  Romans  and  socii,  the  former  naturally  taking 
as  a  rule  double  the  amount  paid  to  the  latter. 
But  the  influx  of  treasure  into  the  State  coffers  soon 
began  to  tell  upon  the  financial  welfare  of  the  whole 
citizen  community ;  the  most  striking  proof  of  this 
is  the  fact  that,  in  167  b.c.,  after  the  second 
Macedonian  war,  the  tributum  or  property-tax  was 
no  longer  imposed  upon  all  citizens.  Henceforward 
the  Roman  citizen  had  hardly  any  burdens  to  bear 
except  the  necessity  of  military  service,  and  there 
are  very  distinct  signs  that  he  was  beginning  to  be 
unwilling  to  bear  even  that  one.  He  saw  the  pro¬ 
minent  men  of  his  time  enriching  themselves  abroad 
and  leading  luxurious  lives,  and  the  spirit  of  ease 
and  idleness  began  inevitably  to  affect  him  too. 
Polybius  indeed,  writing  about  140-130  b.c.,  declines 
to  state  positively  that  the  great  Romans  were 
corrupt  or  extortionate,1  and  those  who  were  his 
intimate  friends,  Aemilius  Paullus  and  his  sons,  were 
distinguished  for  their  “  abstinentia  ”  :  but  the  mere 
occurrence  of  this  word  “  abstinentia  ”  in  the  epitomes 
of  Livy’s  lost  books  which  dealt  with  this  time, 
betrays  the  fact  too  obviously.  In  149  was  passed 
the  first  of  the  long  series  of  laws  intended,  but  in 
vain,  to  check  the  tendency  of  provincial  governors 
to  extort  money  from  their  subjects ;  and  as  this  law 
established  for  the  first  time  a  standing  court  to  try 

1  Polyb  xviii.  35.  For  the  unwillingness  to  serve,  Livy,  Epit.  48  and  55. 


68 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


offences  of  this  kind,  the  inference  is  inevitable  that 
such  offences  were  common  and  on  the  increase. 

The  remarkable  fact  about  this  inpouring  of  wealth 
is  its  extraordinary  suddenness.  Within  the  lifetime 
of  a  single  individual,  Cato  the  Censor,  who  died  an 
old  man  in  149  b.c.,  the  financial  condition  of  the 
State  and  of  individuals  had  undergone  a  complete 
change.  Cato  loved  to  make  money  and  knew  very 
well  how  to  do  it,  as  his  own  treatise  on  agriculture 
plainly  shows  ;  but  he  wished  to  do  it  in  a  legitimate 
way,  and  to  spend  profitably  the  money  he  made, 
and  he  spared  no  pains  to  prevent  others  from 
making  it  illegally  and  spending  it  unprofitably.  He 
saw  clearly  that  the  sudden  influx  of  wealth  was 
disturbing  the  balance  of  the  Roman  mind,  and  that 
the  desire  to  make  money  was  taking  the  place  of 
the  idea  of  duty  to  the  State.  He  knew  that  no 
Roman  could  serve  two  masters,  Mammon  and  the 
State,  and  that  Mammon  was  getting  the  upper  hand 
in  his  views  of  life.  If  the  accumulation  of  wealth 
had  been  gradual  instead  of  sudden,  natural  instead 
of  artificial,  this  could  hardly  have  happened ;  as  in 
England  from  the  fourteenth  century  onwards,  the 
steady  growth  of  capital  would  have  produced  no 
ethical  mischief,  no  false  economic  ideas,  because  it 
would  have  been  an  organic  growth,  resting  upon  a 
sound  and  natural  economic  basis.1  As  the  French 
historian  has  said  with  singular  felicity,2  “  Money  is 


1  Cunningham,  Western  Civilisation  (Modern),  p.  162  foil. 
2  Duruy,  Hist,  de  Rome,  vol.  ii.  p.  12. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


69 


like  the  water  of  a  river :  if  it  suddenly  floods,  it 
devastates ;  divide  it  into  a  thousand  channels  where 
it  circulates  quietly,  and  it  brings  life  and  fertility 
to  every  spot.” 

It  was  in  this  period  of  the  great  wars,  so  un¬ 
wholesome  and  perilous  economically,  that  the  men 
of  business,  as  defined  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter 
— the  men  of  capital  outside  the  ordo  senatorius — 
first  rose  to  real  importance.  In  the  century  that 
followed,  and  as  we  see  them  more  especially  in 
Cicero’s  correspondence,  they  became  a  great  power 
in  the  State,  and  not  only  in  Rome,  but  in  every 
corner  of  the  Empire.  We  have  now  to  see  how  they 
gained  this  importance  and  this  power,  and  what  use 
they  made  of  their  capital  and  their  opportunities. 
This  is  not  usually  explained  or  illustrated  in  the 
ordinary  histories  of  Rome,  yet  it  is  impossible  with¬ 
out  explaining  it  to  understand  either  the  social  or 
the  public  life  of  the  Rome  of  this  period. 

The  men  of  business  may  be  divided  into  two 
classes,  according  as  they  undertook  work  for  the 
State  or  on  their  own  account  entirely.  It  does  not 
follow  that  these  two  classes  were  mutually  exclusive  ; 
a  man  might  very  well  invest  his  money  in  both 
kinds  of  undertaking,  but  these  two  kinds  were 
totally  distinct,  and  called  by  different  names.  A 
public  undertaking  was  called  publicum ,*  and  the 
men  who  undertook  it  publicani ;  a  private  under¬ 
taking  was  negotium,  and  all  private  business  men 


1  Cic.  de  Provmciis  consular ibn*  v.  12. 


70 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


were  known  as  negotiatores.  The  publicani  were 
always  organised  in  joint-stock  companies  ( societates 
publicanorum) ;  the  negotiatores  might  be  in  private 
partnership  with  one  or  more  partners,1  but  as  a  rule 
seem  to  have  been  single  individuals.  We  will  deal 
first  with  the  publicani. 

In  a  passage  of  Livy  quoted  just  now  it  is 
stated  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  Hannibalic  war 
money  was  advanced  to  the  State  by  societates 
publicanorum ;  Livy  also  happens  to  mention  that 
three  of  these  competed  for  the  privilege.  Thus  it 
is  clear  that  the  system  of  getting  public  work  done 
by  contract  was  in  full  operation  before  that  date, 
together  with  the  practice  on  the  part  of  the  con¬ 
tractors  of  uniting  in  partnerships  to  lessen  the  risk. 
System  and  practice  are  equally  natural,  and  it  needs 
but  a  little  historical  imagination  to  realise  their 
development.  As  the  Roman  State  became  involved 
in  wars  leading  to  the  conquest  of  Italy,  and  in  due 
time  to  the  acquisition  of  dominions  beyond  sea, 
armies  and  fleets  had  to  be  equipped  and  provisioned, 
roads  had  to  be  made,  public  rents  to  be  got  in,  new 
buildings  to  be  erected  for  public  convenience  or 
worship,  corn  had  to  be  procured  for  the  growing 
population,  and,  above  all,  taxes  had  to  be  collected 
both  in  Italy  and  in  the  provinces  as  these  were 
severally  acquired.2  The  government  had  no  ap- 

1  Cic.  pro  Quinctio  3.  12  ;  a  good  case  of  partnership  in  a  res  pecuaria  et 
rustica  in  Gaul. 

2  Examples  in  Livy  xriii.  49  ;  xxxii.  7  (portoria) ;  xxxviii.  35  (corn- 
supply)  ;  xliv.  16  (army) ;  xlii.  9  (revenue  of  ager  Campanus). 


III 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


7 1 


paratus  for  carrying  out  these  undertakings  itself ; 
it  had  not,  as  we  have,  separate  departments  or 
bureaux  with  a  permanent  staff  of  officials  attached 
to  each,  and  even  if  it  had  been  so  provided,  it  would 
still  have  found  it  most  convenient,  as  modern 
governments  also  do,  to  get  the  necessary  work 
carried  out  in  most  cases  by  private  contractors. 
Every  five  years  the  censors  let  the  various  works  by 
auction  to  contracting  companies,  who  engaged  to 
carry  them  out  for  fixed  sums,  and  make  what  profit 
they  could  out  of  the  business  ( censoria  locatio). 
This  saved  an  immense  amount  of  trouble  to  the 
senate  and  magistrates,  who  were  usually  busily 
engaged  in  other  matters  ;  nor  was  there  at  first  any 
harm  in  the  system,  so  long  as  the  Romans  were 
morally  sound,  and  incapable  of  jobbing  or  scamping 
their  work.  The  very  fact  that  they  united  into 
companies  for  the  purpose  of  undertaking  these 
contracts  shows  that  they  were  aware  of  the  risk 
involved,  and  wished  as  far  as  possible  to  neutralise 
it;  it  did  not  mean  greed  for  money,  but  rather 
anxiety  not  to  lose  the  capital  invested. 

But  as  Rome  advanced  her  dominion  in  the  second 
century  B.C.,  and  had  to  see  to  an  ever-increasing 
amount  of  public  business,  it  was  discovered  that  the 
business  of  contracting  was  one  which  might  indeed 
be  risky,  but  with  skill  and  experience,  and  especially 
with  a  trifle  of  unscrupulousness,  might  be  made  a 
perfectly  safe  and  paying  investment.  This  was 
especially  the  case  with  the  undertakings  for  raising 


72 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  taxes  in  the  newly  acquired  provinces  as  well  as 
in  Italy,  more  particularly  in  those  provinces,  viz. 
Sicily  and  Asia,  which  paid  their  taxes  in  the  form 
of  tithe  and  not  in  a  lump  sum.  The  collection  of 
these  revenues  could  be  made  a  very  paying  concern, 
seeing  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  be  too  squeamish 
about  the  rights  and  claims  of  the  provincials.  And, 
indeed,  by  the  time  of  the  Gracchi  all  these  joint-stock 
companies  had  become  the  one  favourite  investment 
in  which  every  one  who  had  any  capital,  however 
small,  placed  it  without  hesitation.  Polybius,  who 
was  in  Rome  at  this  time  for  several  years,  and  was 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  Roman  life,  has  left  a 
valuable  record  in  his  sixth  book  (ch.  xvii.)  of  the 
universal  demand  for  shares  in  these  companies ;  a 
fact  which  proves  that  they  were  believed  to  be  both 
safe  and  profitable. 

These  societates  were  managed  by  the  great  men 
of  business,  as  our  joint-stock  companies  are  directed 
by  men  of  capital  and  consequence.  Polybius  tells 
us  that  among  those  who  were  concerned,  some  took 
the  contracts  from  the  censors :  these  were  called 
mancipes,  because  the  sign  of  accepting  the  contract 
at  the  auction  was  to  hold  up  the  hand.1  Others, 
Polybius  goes  on,  were  in  association  with  these 
mancipes,  and,  as  we  may  assume,  equally  responsible 
with  them ;  these  were  the  socii.  It  was  of  course 
necessary  that  security  should  be  given  for  the  ful¬ 
filment  of  the  contract,  and  Polybius  does  not  omit 


1  Festus,  ed.  Muller,  p.  151. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


73 


to  mention  the  precedes  or  guarantors.1  Lastly,  he 
says  that  others  again  gave  their  property  on  behalf 
of  these  official  members  of  the  companies,  or  in 
their  name,  for  the  public  purpose  in  hand.  These 
last  words  admit  of  more  than  one  interpretation, 
but  as  in  the  same  passage  Polybius  tells  us  that  all 
who  had  any  money  put  it  into  these  concerns,  we 
may  reasonably  suppose  that  he  means  to  indicate 
the  participes ,  or  small  holders  of  shares,  which  were 
called  partes,  or  if  very  small,  particulae .2  The 
socii  and  participes  seem  to  be  distinguished  by 
Cicero  in  his  Verrine  orations  (ii.  1.  55),  where  he 
quotes  an  addition  made  by  Yerres  illegally  as 
praetor  to  a  lex  censoria :  “  qui  de  censoribus  red¬ 
emerit,  eum  socium  ne  admittito  neve  partem  dato.” 
If  this  be  so,  we  may  regard  the  socius  as  having  a 
share  both  in  the  management  and  the  liability, 
while  the  particeps  merely  put  his  money  into  the 
undertaking.3  The  actual  management,  on  which 
Polybius  is  silent,  was  in  Rome  in  the  hands  of  a 
magister,  changing  yearly,  like  the  magistrates  of 
the  State,  and  in  the  provinces  of  a  pro -magister 
answering  to  the  pro -magistrate,  with  a  large  staff 
of  assistants.4  Communications  between  the  manage- 

1  e.g.  Livy  xxii.  60  praedibus  et  praediis  cavere  populo. 

2  Cicero,  in  his  defence  of  Rabirius  Postumus,  2.  4,  says  that  Rabirius’ 
father  magnas  partes  habuit  publicorum.  One  Aufidius  (Val.  Max.  vi.  9.  7) 
“Asiatici  publici  exiguam  admodum  particulam  habuit.”  Cp.  Cic.  in  Vat. 
12.  29. 

3  This  is  the  view  of  Deloume,  Les  Manieurs  d’ argent  d.  Rome, 
p.  119  foil. 

*  Marq.  Staatsverwaltung,  ii.  p.  291. 


74 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


ment  at  home  and  that  in  the  provinces  were  kept 
up  by  messengers  ( tabellarii ),  who  were  chiefly 
slaves ;  and  it  is  interesting  incidentally  to  notice 
that  these,  who  are  constantly  mentioned  in  Cicero’s 
letters,  also  acted  as  letter-carriers  for  private  persons 
to  whom  their  employers  were  known. 

Such  a  business  as  this,  involving  the  interests  of 
so  many  citizens,  must  have  necessitated  something 
very  like  the  Stock  Exchange  or  Bourse  of  modern 
times ;  and  in  fact  the  basilicas  and  porticoes  which 
we  met  with  in  the  Forum  during  our  walk  through 
Rome  did  actually  serve  this  purpose.1  The  reader 
of  Cicero’s  letters  will  have  noticed  how  often  the 
Forum  is  spoken  of  as  the  centre  of  life  at  Rome- 
going  down  to  the  Forum  was  indeed  the  equivalent 
of  “  going  into  the  City,”  as  well  as  of  “  going  down 
to  Westminster.”  All  who  had  investments  in  the 
societates  would  wish  to  know  the  latest  news 
brought  by  labellarii  from  the  provinces,  e.g.  of  the 
state  of  the  crop  in  Sicily  or  Asia,  or  of  the  disposition 
of  some  provincial  governor  towards  the  publicani 
of  his  province,  or  again  of  the  approach  of  some 
enemy,  such  as  Mithridates  or  Ariovistus,  who  by 
defeating  a  Roman  army  might  break  into  Roman 
territory  and  destroy  the  prospects  of  a  successful 
contractual  enterprise.  Assuredly  Cicero’s  love  for 
the  Forum  was  not  a  political  one  only ;  he  loved  it 
indeed  as  the  scene  of  his  great  triumphs  as  an 
advocate,  but  also  no  doubt  because  he  was  concerned 


1  Delourae,  Manieurs  d' argent,  p.  317  foil. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


75 


in  some  of  the  companies  which  had  their  head¬ 
quarters  there.  When  urging  the  people  to  give 
Pompeius  extraordinary  powers  to  drive  Mithridates 
out  of  reach  of  Roman  Asia,  where  he  had  done 
incalculable  damage,  he  dwells  both  with  knowledge 
and  feeling  on  the  value  of  the  province,  not  only  to 
the  State,  but  to  innumerable  private  citizens  who 
had  their  money  invested  in  its  revenues.1  “  If 
some,”  he  pleads,  “  lose  their  whole  fortunes,  they  will 
drag  many  more  down  with  them.  Save  the  State 
from  such  a  calamity  :  and  believe  me  (though  you 
see  it  well  enough)  that  the  whole  system  of  credit 
and  finance  which  is  carried  on  here  at  Rome  in  the 
Forum,  is  inextricably  bound  up  with  the  revenues 
of  the  Asiatic  province.  If  those  revenues  are 
destroyed,  our  whole  system  of  credit  will  come  down 
with  a  crash.  See  that  you  do  not  hesitate  for  a 
moment  to  prosecute  with  all  your  energies  a  war 
by  which  the  glory  of  the  Roman  name,  the  safety 
of  our  allies,  our  most  valuable  revenues,  and  the 
fortunes  of  innumerable  citizens,  will  be  effectually 
preserved.”2 

This  is  a  good  example  of  the  way  in  which 
political  questions  might  be  decided  in  the  interests 
of  capital,  and  it  is  all  the  more  striking,  because 
a  few  years  earlier  Sulla  had  done  all  he  could  to 
weaken  the  capitalists  as  a  distinct  class.  Pompeius 
went  out  with  abnormal  powers,  and  might  be  con¬ 
sidered  for  the  time  as  their  representative ;  the 


j pro  Icje  Manilla,  7.  18. 


2  lb.  7.  19. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


76 

result  in  this  case  was  on  the  whole  good,  for  the 
work  he  did  in  the  East  was  of  permanent  value  to 
the  Empire.  But  the  constitution  was  shaken  and 
never  wholly  recovered,  and  nothing  that  he  was 
able  to  do  could  restore  the  unfortunate  province  of 
Asia  to  its  former  prosperity.  Four  years  later  the 
company  which  had  contracted  for  raising  the  taxes  in 
the  province  sought  to  repudiate  their  bargain.  This 
was  disgraceful,  as  Cicero  himself  expressly  says ; 1 
but  it  is  quite  possible  that  they  had  great  difficulty 
in  getting  the  money  in,  and  feared  a  dead  loss,2 
owing  to  the  impoverishment  of  the  provincials. 
This  matter  again  led  to  a  political  crisis ;  for  the 
senate,  urged  by  Cato,  was  disposed  to  refuse  the 
concession,  and  the  alliance  between  the  senatorial 
class  and  the  business  men  ( ordinum  concordia), 
which  it  had  been  Cicero’s  particular  policy  to  con¬ 
firm,  in  order  to  mass  together  all  men  of  property 
against  the  dangers  of  socialism  and  anarchy,  was 
thereby  threatened  so  seriously  that  it  ceased  to  be 
a  factor  in  politics. 

These  companies  and  their  agents  were  indeed 
destined  to  be  a  thorn  in  Cicero’s  side  as  a  provincial 
governor  himself.  When  called  upon  to  rule  Cilicia 
in  51  b.c.  he  found  the  people  quite  unable  to  pay 
their  taxes  and  driven  into  the  hands  of  the  middle- 

1  ad  Att.  i.  17.  9.  Crassus,  no  doubt  a  large  shareholder,  urged  them  on. 

2  In  a  letter  to  his  brother,  then  governor  of  this  province,  Cicero  con¬ 
templates  the  possibility  of  contracts  being  taken  at  a  loss  (ad  Q.  F.  i.  1.  33), 
“  publicis  male  redemptis.”  And  in  a  letter  of  introduction  in  46,  he  alludes 
to  heavy  losses  suffered  in  this  way,  ad  Fam.  xiii.  10. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


77 


man  in  order  to  do  so ; 1  his  sympathies  were  thus 
divided  between  the  unfortunate  provincials,  for  whom 
he  felt  a  genuine  pity,  and  the  interests  of  the  com¬ 
pany  for  collecting  the  Cilician  taxes,  and  of  those 
who  had  invested  their  money  in  its  funds.  In  his 
edict,  issued  before  his  entrance  into  the  province,  he 
had  tried  to  balance  the  conflicting  interests  ;  writing 
of  it  to  Atticus,  who  had  naturally  as  a  capitalist  been 
anxious  to  know  what  he  was  doing,  he  says  that  he 
is  doing  all  he  can  for  the  publicani,  coaxing  them, 
praising  them,  yielding  to  them — but  taking  care 
that  they  do  no  mischief ; 2  words  which  perhaps 
did  not  altogether  satisfy  his  friend.  All  honest 
provincial  governors,  especially  in  the  Eastern 
provinces,  which  had  been  the  scene  of  continual 
wars  for  nearly  three  centuries,  found  themselves  in 
the  same  difficulty.  They  were  continually  beset  by 
urgent  appeals  on  behalf  of  the  tax-companies  and 
their  agents-— appeals  made  without  a  thought  of  the 
condition  of  a  province  or  its  tax -paying  capacity— 
so  completely  had  the  idea  of  making  money  taken 
possession  of  the  Roman  mind.  Among  the  letters 
of  Cicero  are  many  such  appeals,  sent  by  himself 
to  other  provincial  governors,  some  of  them  while 
he  was  himself  in  Cilicia.  We  may  take  two  as 
examples,  before  bringing  this  part  of  our  subject  to 
a  close. 

The  first  of  these  letters  is  to  P.  Silius  Nerva, 
propraetor  of  Bithynia,  a  province  recently  added  to 

1  ad  Att.  v.  16.  2.  *  ^  vi.  1.  16. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


78 

the  Empire  by  Pompeius.  Cicero  here  says  that  he 
is  himself  closely  connected  with  the  partners  in  the 
company  for  collecting  the  pasture-dues  (scriptura) 
of  the  province,  “  not  only  because  that  company  as 
a  body  is  my  client,  but  also  because  I  am  very 
intimate  with  most  of  the  individual  partners.” 
Can  we  doubt  that  he  was  himself  a  shareholder  ? 
He  urges  Nerva  to  do  all  he  can  for  Terentius  Hispo, 
the  pro-magister  of  the  company,  and  to  try  to  secure 
for  him  the  means  of  making  all  the  necessary 
arrangements  with  the  taxed  communities — relying, 
we  are  glad  to  find,  on  the  tact  and  kindness  of  the 
governor.1  The  second  letter,  to  his  own  son-in- 
law,  Furius  Crassipes,  quaestor  of  Bithynia,  shall 
be  quoted  here  in  full  from  Mr.  Shuckburgh’s  trans¬ 
lation  :  2 

“  Though  in  a  personal  interview  I  recommended 
as  earnestly  as  I  could  the  publicani  of  Bithynia,  and 
though  I  gathered  that  by  your  own  inclination  no 
less  than  from  my  recommendation,  you  were  anxious 
to  promote  the  advantage  of  that  company  in  every 
way  in  your  power,  I  have  not  hesitated  to  write 
you  this,  since  those  interested  thought  it  of  great 
importance  that  I  should  inform  you  what  my  feel¬ 
ing  towards  them  was.  I  wish  you  to  believe  that, 
while  I  have  ever  had  the  greatest  pleasure  in  doing 
all  I  can  for  the  order  of  publicani  generally,  yet 
this  particular  company  of  Bithynia  has  my  special 


1  ad  Familiares,  xiii.  65. 

!  lb.  xiii.  9.  I  have  not  adhered  quite  closely  to  his  translation. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


79 


good  wishes.  Owing  to  the  rank  and  birth  of  its 
members,  this  company  constitutes  a  very  important 
part  of  the  state  :  for  it  is  made  up  of  members  of 
the  other  companies  :  and  it  so  happens  that  a  very 
large  number  of  its  members  are  extremely  intimate 
with  me,  and  especially  the  man  who  is  at  present 
at  the  head  of  the  business,  P.  Rupilius,  its  pro- 
magister.  Such  being  the  case,  I  beg  you  with  more 
than  common  earnestness  to  protect  Cn.  Pupius,  an 
employ^  of  the  company,1  by  every  sort  of  kindness 
and  liberality  in  your  power,  and  to  secure,  as  you 
easily  may,  that  his  services  shall  be  as  satisfactory 
as  possible  to  the  company,  while  at  the  same  time 
securing  and  promoting  the  property  and  interests  of 
the  partners — as  to  which  I  am  well  aware  how  much 
power  a  quaestor  possesses.  You  will  be  doing  me  in 
this  matter  a  very  great  favour,  and  I  can  myself 
from  personal  experience  pledge  you  my  word  that 
you  will  find  the  partners  of  the  Bithynia  company 
gratefully  mindful  of  any  services  you  can  do  them.” 

If  Cicero,  the  most  tender-hearted  of  Roman 
public  men,  could  urge  the  claims  of  the  companies 
so  strongly,  and,  as  in  this  last  letter,  without 
any  allusion  to  the  interests  of  the  province  and 
its  people,  we  may  well  imagine  how  others,  less 
scrupulous,  must  have  combined  with  the  capitalists 
to  work  havoc  in  regions  that  only  needed  peace  and 
mild  government  to  recover  from  centuries  of  misery. 

1  “  Qui  est  in  operis  ejus  societatis,”  i.e.  engaged  as  a  subordinate  agent. 
— Marquardt,  Staatsverwaltung,  ii.  p.  291. 


8o 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Such  a  letter  is  the  best  comment  we  can  have  on 
the  pernicious  system  of  raising  taxes  by  contract, 
— a  system  which  was  to  be  modified,  regulated,  and 
eventually  reduced  to  harmless  dimensions  under  the 
benevolent  and  scientific  government  of  the  early 
Empire. 

We  must  now  turn  to  the  other  department  of  the 
activity  of  the  men  of  business,  that  of  banking  and 
money-lending  ( negotiatores ). 

On  the  north  or  sunny  side  of  the  Forum  we 
noticed  in  our  walk  round  the  city  the  shops  of  the 
bankers  ( tabernae  argentariae).  The  argentarii 
were  originally,  as  their  name  suggests,  only  money¬ 
changers,  a  class  of  small  business  men  that  arose  in 
response  to  a  need  felt  as  soon  as  increasing  commerce 
and  extended  empire  brought  foreign  coin  in  large 
quantities  to  Rome.  The  Italian  communities  outside 
the  Roman  State  issued  their  own  coinage  until  they 
were  admitted  to  the  civitas  after  the  Social  War, — a 
fact  which  alone  is  sufficient  to  show  the  need  of  men 
who  made  it  their  business  to  know  the  current  value 
of  various  coins  in  Roman  money ;  and  as  Rome 
became  involved  in  the  affairs  of  the  East,  there  were 
always  circulating  in  the  city  the  tetradrachms  of 
Antioch  and  Alexandria,  the  Rhodian  drachmas,  and 
the  cistophori  of  the  kings  of  Pergamus,  afterwards 
coined  in  the  province  of  Asia.1  No  doubt  the 
money-changing  business  was  a  profitable  one,  and 
itself  led  to  the  formation  of  capital  which  could  be 

1  Marq.  ii.  p.  35  foil. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


81 


used  in  taking  deposits  and  making  advances ;  and, 
as  Professor  Purser  puts  it,1  the  mere  possession 
of  a  quantity  of  coin  for  purposes  of  change  would 
be  likely  to  develop  spontaneously  the  profession  of 
banking.  In  the  same  way  the  nummularii,  or 
assayers  of  the  coin,  having  a  mass  of  it  in  their 
hands,  would  tend  to  develop  a  private  business  as 
well  as  their  official  public  one.  All  these,  argentarii 
or  nummularii,  might  be  called  foeneratores,  from  the 
interest  ( foenus )  which  they  charged  in  their  trans¬ 
actions.  The  profession  was  a  respectable  one,  for 
honesty  and  exactness  in  accounts  were  absolutely 
necessary  to  success  in  it.2  If  the  reader  will  turn 
to  Cicero’s  speech  in  defence  of  Caecina  (6.  16), 
he  will  find  these  accounts  appealed  to,  though 
apparently  not  actually  produced  in  court ;  but  in 
the  Nodes  Atticae  of  Aulus  Gellius  (xiv.  2)  a 
judge  who  is  describing  a  civil  case  which  came 
before  him,  mentions,  among  the  documents  pro¬ 
duced,  mensae  rationes,  i.e.  the  accounts  kept  by 
the  banker. 

Your  argentarius  seems  to  have  been  ready  to 
undertake  for  you  almost  all  that  a  modern  banker 
will  do  for  his  customer.  He  would  take  deposits  of 
money,  either  for  the  depositor’s  use  or  to  bear 
interest,  and  would  make  payments  on  his  behalf  on 

1  See  Ms  article  in  Diet,  of  Antiq.  ed.  2,  s.v.  argentarii. 

*  Augustus’  grandfather  was  an  argentarius  (Suet.  Aug.  2),  yet  his  soa 
could  marry  a  Julia,  and  he  elected  to  the  consulship,  which,  however,  he 
was  prevented  by  death  from  filling. 

G 


82 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


chap. 


receipt  of  a  written  order,  answering  to  our  cheque  ; 1 
this  was  a  practice  probably  introduced  from  Greece, 
for  in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  the  whole  business 
of  credit  and  exchange  had  long  been  reduced  to  a 
system.  Again,  if  you  wished  to  be  supplied  with 
money  during  a  journey,  or  to  pay  a  sum  to  any  one 
at  a  distance,  e.g.  in  Greece  or  Asia,  your  argentarius 
would  arrange  it  for  you  by  giving  you  letters  of 
credit  or  bills  of  exchange  on  a  banker  at  such  towns 
as  you  might  mention,  and  so  save  you  the  trouble  of 
carrying  a  heavy  weight  of  coin  with  you.  When 
Cicero  sent  his  son  to  the  University  of  Athens, 
he  wished  to  give  him  a  generous  allowance, — too 
generous,  as  we  should  think,  for  it  amounted  to 
about  £640  a  year, — and  he  asked  Atticus  whether 
it  could  be  managed  for  him  by  jpermutatio,  i.e. 
exchange,  and  received  an  affirmative  answer.2  So 
too  when  his  beloved  freedman  secretary  Tiro  fell  ill 
of  fever  at  Patrae,  Cicero  finds  it  easy  to  get  a  local 
banker  there  to  advance  him  all  the  money  he  needed, 
and  to  pay  the  doctor,  engaging  himself  to  repay  the 
money  to  any  agent  whom  the  banker  might  name.3 

Your  argentarius  would  also  attend  for  you,  or 
appoint  an  agent  to  attend,  at  any  public  auction  in 
which  you  were  interested  as  seller  or  purchaser,  and 
would  pay  or  receive  the  money  for  you, — a  practice 
which  must  have  greatly  helped  him  in  getting  to 

1  The  word  for  this  cheque  is  perscriptio.  Cp.  Cic.  ad  Att.  ix.  12.  3  viri 
boni  usuras  perscribunt,  i.e.  draw  the  interest  on  their  deposits. 

2  Cic.  ad  Att.  xii.  24  and  27.  5  Cic.  ad  Fam.  xvi.  4  and  9. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


know  the  current  value  of  all  kinds  of  property,  and 
indeed  in  learning  to  understand  human  nature  on  its 
business  side.  In  the  passage  from  the  pro  Caecina 
quoted  just  now,  a  lady,  Caesennia,  wished  to  buy  an 
estate;  she  employs  an  agent,  Aebutius,  no  doubt 
recommended  by  her  banker,  and  to  him  the  estate  is 
knocked  down.  He  undertakes  that  the  argentarius 
of  the  vendor,  who  is  present  at  the  auction,  shall 
be  paid  the  value,  and  this  is  ultimately  done  by 
Caesennia,  and  the  sum  entered  in  the  banker  s  books 
(tabulae). 

But  perhaps  the  most  important  part  of  the 
business  was  the  finding  money  for  those  who  were 
in  want  of  it,  i.e.  making  advances  on  interest.  The 
poor  man  who  was  in  need  of  ready  money  could  get 
it  from  the  argentarius  in  coin  if  he  had  any  security 
to  offer,  and,  as  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  might 
get  entangled  more  and  more  hopelessly  in  the  nets 
of  the  money-lender.  Whether  the  same  argentarius 
did  this  small  business  and  also  the  work  of  supplying 
the  rich  man  with  credit,  we  do  not  know ;  it  may 
have  been  the  case  that  the  great  money-lenders  like 
Atticus  themselves  employed  argentarii,  and  so  kept 
them  going.  That  Atticus  would  undertake,  anyhow, 
for  a  friend  like  Cicero,  any  amount  of  money -finding, 
we  know  well  from  many  letters  of  Cicero,  written 
when  he  was  anxious  to  buy  a  piece  of  land  at  any 
cost  on  which  to  erect  a  shrine  to  his  beloved 
daughter ; 1  and  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  Atticus 

1  Cic.  ad  Att.  xiii.  contains  many  letters  of  interest  in  this  connexion. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP 


84 

could  not  have  done  all  that  Cicero  importunately 
pressed  upon  him  if  he  had  not  had  a  number  of  useful 
professional  agents  at  command.  From  these  same 
letters  we  also  learn  that  finding  money  by  no  means 
necessarily  meant  finding  coin  ;  in  a  society  where 
every  one  was  lending  or  borrowing,  and  probably 
doing  both  at  the  same  time,  what  actually  passed 
was  chiefly  securities,  mortgages,  debts,  and  so  on. 
If  you  wanted  to  hand  over  a  hundred  thousand  or  so 
to  a  creditor,  what  your  agent  had  as  often  as  not  to  do 
was  to  persuade  that  creditor  to  accept  as  payment 
the  debts  owing  to  yourself  from  others,  i.e.  you  would 
hand  over  to  him,  if  he  would  accept  them,  the  bonds 
or  other  securities  given  you  by  your  own  debtors.1 

It  is  plain  then  that  the  money-lenders  had  an 
enormous  business,  even  in  Rome  alone,  and  risky  as 
it  undoubtedly  was,  it  must  often  have  been  a  profit¬ 
able  one.  And  it  was  not  only  at  Rome  that  men 
were  borrowing  and  lending,  but  over  the  whole 
Empire.  For  reasons  which  it  would  need  an 
economic  treatise  to  explain,  private  men,  cities, 
and  even  kings  were  in  want  of  money ;  it  was 
needed  to  meet  the  increased  cost  of  living  and  the 
constantly  increasing  standard  of  living  among  the 
educated  ; 2  it  was  needed  by  the  cities  of  Greece  and 

1  Cic.  ad  Alt.  xiii.  2.  3.  Cp.  xii.  25.  In  xii.  12  Cicero's  divorced  wife 
Terentia  wishes  to  pay  a  debt  by  transferring  to  her  creditor  a  debt  of 
Cicero’s  to  herself.  Another  way  in  which  actual  payment  could  be  avoided 
was  by  paying  interest  on  purchase -money  instead  of  the  lump  sum. 
Cp.  xii.  22. 

"  A  good  example  of  this  in  Velleius  iL  10  (house-rent). 


in  THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS  85 

the  East  to  repair  the  damages  done  in  the  wars  of 
the  last  three  hundred  years ;  it  was  needed  by  the 
poorer  provincials  to  pay  the  taxes  for  which  neither 
the  publicani  nor  the  Roman  government  could 
afford  to  wait ;  and  it  was  needed  by  the  kings  who 
had  come  within  the  dismal  shadow  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  in  order  to  carry  on  their  own  government, 
or  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  neighbouring 
provincial  governor,  or  to  bribe  the  ruling  men  at 
Rome  to  get  some  decree  passed  in  their  favour. 
Cicero,  at  the  end  of  his  life,  looking  back  to  his  own 
consulship  in  63,  says  that  at  no  time  in  his  recol¬ 
lection  was  the  whole  world  in  such  a  condition  of 
indebtedness,1  and  in  a  famous  passage  in  his  second 
Catilinarian  oration  he  has  drawn  a  picture  of  the 
various  classes  of  debtors  in  Rome  and  Italy  at  that 
time  (Cat.  ii.  §  18  foil.).  He  tells  us  of  those  who 
have  wealth  and  yet  will  not  pay  their  debts ;  of 
those  who  are  in  debt  and  look  to  a  revolution  to 
absolve  them ;  of  the  veterans  of  the  Sullan  army, 
settled  in  colonies  such  as  Faesulae,  who  had  rushed 
into  debt  in  order  to  live  luxurious  lives ;  of  old 
debtors  of  the  city,  getting  deeper  and  deeper  into 
the  quagmire,  who  joined  the  conspiracy  as  a  last 
desperate  venture.  There  was  in  fact  in  that  famous 
year  a  real  social  fermentation  going  on,  caused  by 
economic  disturbance  of  the  most  serious  kind ;  the 
germs  of  the  disease  can  be  traced  back  to  the 
Hannibalic  war  and  its  effects  on  Italy,  but  all  the 

1  Cic.  de  Officiis,  ii.  24,  84. 


86 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


symptoms  had  been  continually  exacerbated  by  the 
negligence  and  ignorance  of  the  government,  and 
brought  to  a  head  by  the  Social  and  Civil  Wars  in 
90-82  b.c.  In  63  the  State  escaped  an  economic 
catastrophe  through  the  vigilance  of  Cicero  and  the 
alliance  of  the  respectable  classes  under  his  leader¬ 
ship.  In  49,  and  again  in  48,  it  escaped  a  similar 
disaster  through  the  good  sense  of  Caesar  and  his 
agents,  who  succeeded  in  steering  between  Scylla  and 
Charybdis  by  saving  the  debtors  without  ruining  the 
lenders.1 

Wonderful  figures  are  given  by  later  writers,  such 
as  Plutarch,  of  the  debts  and  loans  of  the  great  men 
of  this  time,  and  they  may  stand  as  giving  us  a 
general  impression  of  private  financial  recklessness. 
But  the  only  authentic  information  that  has  come 
down  to  us  is  what  Cicero  drops  from  time  to  time 
in  his  correspondence  about  his  own  affairs,2  and  even 
this  needs  much  explanation  which  we  are  unable  to 
apply  to  it.  What  is  certain  is  that  Cicero  never 
had  more  than  a  very  moderate  income  on  which  he 
could  depend,  and  that  at  times  he  was  hard  up  for 
money,  especially  of  course  after  his  exile  and  the 
confiscation  of  his  property  ;  and  that  on  the  other 
hand  he  never  had  any  difficulty  in  getting  the  sums 
he  needed,  and  never  shows  the  smallest  real  anxiety 
about  his  finances.  His  profession  as  a  barrister 

1  Caesar,  de  Bell.  Civ.  iii.  1  and  20  foil. 

2  Deloume  in  his  Manicurs  d' argent  has  a  chapter  on  this  (p.  58  foil.), 
but  his  details  are  not  wholly  to  be  relied  on.  Boissier’s  sketch  in  Cic4ron 
cl  ses  amis,  83  foil.,  is  quite  accurate. 


ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


87 

only  brought  him  a  return  indirectly  in  the  form  of 
an  occasional  legacy  or  gift,  since  fees  were  forbidden 
by  a  lex  Cincia ;  his  books  could  hardly  have  paid 
him,  at  least  in  the  form  of  money ;  his  inherited 
property  was  small,  and  his  Italian  villas  were  not 
profitable  farms,  nor  was  it  the  practice  to  let  such 
country  houses,  as  we  do  now,  when  not  occupying 
them ;  he  declined  a  provincial  government,  the 
usual  source  of  wealth,  and  when  at  last  compelled 
to  undertake  one,  only  realised  what  was  then  a 
paltry  sum, — some  £17,500,  all  of  which,  while  in 
deposit  at  Ephesus,  was  seized  by  the  Pompeians  in 
the  Civil  War.1  Yet  even  early  in  life  he  could  afford 
the  necessary  expenses  for  election  to  successive 
magistracies,  and  could  live  in  the  style  demanded 
of  an  important  public  man.  Immediately  after  his 
consulship  he  paid  £28,000  for  Crassus’  house  on  the 
Palatine,  and  it  is  here  that  we  first  discover  how  he 
managed  such  financial  operations.  Here  are  his  own 
words  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  of  December  62  B.c.  : 2 
“  I  have  bought  the  house  for  3,500  sestertia  ...  so 
you  may  now  look  on  me  as  so  deeply  in  debt  as  to 
be  eager  to  join  a  conspiracy  if  any  one  would  admit 
me  I  .  .  .  Money  is  plentiful  at  6  per  cent,  and  the 
success  of  my  measures  (in  the  consulship)  has  caused 
me  to  be  regarded  as  a  good  security.” 

The  simple  fact  was  that  Cicero  was  always 
regarded  as  a  safe  man  to  lend  money  to,  by  the 
business  men  and  the  great  capitalists ;  partly 

2  lb.  v.  9. 


1  ad  Fain.  y.  20  fin. 


88 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


because  he  was  an  honest  man, —  a  vir  bonus  who 
would  never  dream  of  repudiation  or  bankruptcy ; 
partly  because  he  knew  every  one,  and  had  a  hundred 
wealthy  friends  besides  the  lender  of  the  moment, 
and  among  them,  most  faithful  of  all,  the  prudent 
and  indefatigable  Atticus.  Undoubtedly  then  it  was 
by  borrowing,  and  regularly  paying  interest  on  the 
loans,  that  he  raised  money  whenever  he  wanted  it. 
He  may  have  occasionally  made  money  in  the 
companies  of  tax-collectors ;  we  have  seen  that  he 
probably  had  shares  in  some  of  their  ventures.  But 
there  is  no  clear  evidence  in  his  letters  of  this  source 
of  wealth,1  and  there  is  abundant  evidence  of  the 
borrowing.  After  his  return  from  exile,  though  the 
senate  had  given  him  somewhat  meagre  compensa¬ 
tion  for  the  loss  of  his  property,  he  began  at  once 
to  borrow  and  to  build :  “I  am  building  in  three 
places,”  he  writes  to  his  brother,2  “  and  am  patching 
up  my  other  houses.  I  live  somewhat  more  lavishly 
than  I  used  to  do ;  I  am  obliged  to  do  so.”  Here 
again  we  know  from  whom  he  borrowed, — it  was  this 
same  brother,  who  of  course  had  no  more  certain 
income  than  his  own,  probably  less.  But  he  had 
been  governor  of  Asia  for  three  years  (61-58  B.c.),  and 
must  have  realised  large  sums  even  in  that  exhausted 
province ;  and  at  this  moment  he  was  legatus  to 
Pompeius  as  special  commissioner  for  organising  the 

1  Deloume’s  attempt  to  prove  that  Cicero  speculated  with  enormous 
profits  seems  to  me  to  miss  the  mark. 

2  ad  Q.  Fratr.  ii.  4.  3.  Cp.  ad  Att.  iv.  2. 


m  THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS  89 

supply  of  corn,  and  thus  was  in  immediate  contact 
with  one  of  the  greatest  millionaires  of  the  day.  In 
order  to  repay  his  brother  all  Marcus  had  to  do  was 
to  borrow  from  other  friends.  “  In  regard  to  money 
I  am  crippled.  But  the  liberality  of  my  brother  I 
have  repaid,  in  spite  of  his  protests,  by  the  aid  of 
my  friends,  that  I  might  not  be  drained  quite  dry 
myself”  (ad  Att.  iv.  3).  Two  years  later  an  unwary 
reader  might  feel  some  astonishment  at  finding  that 
Quintus  himself  was  now  deep  in  debt ; 1 2  but  as  he 
continues  to  read  the  correspondence  his  astonish¬ 
ment  will  vanish.  With  the  prospect  before  him  of 
a  prolonged  stay  in  Gaul  with  Caesar,  Quintus  might 
doubtless  have  borrowed  to  any  extent ;  and  in  fact 
with  Caesar’s  help — the  proceeds  of  the  Gallic  wars — 
both  brothers  found  themselves  in  opulence.  The 
Civil  War,  and  the  repayment  of  his  debts  to  Caesar, 
nearly  ruined  Marcus  towards  the  end  of  his  life, 
but  nothing  prevented  his  contriving  to  find  money 
for  any  object  on  which  he  had  set  his  heart ; 
when  in  his  grief  for  the  loss  of  his  daughter  he 
wishes  to  buy  suburban  gardens  where  a  shrine  to  her 
memory  may  (strange  to  say)  attract  public  notice, 
he  tells  Atticus  to  buy  what  is  necessary  at  any 
cost.  “  Manage  the  business  your  own  way ;  do 
not  consider  what  my  purse  demands — about  that 
I  care  nothing— but  what  I  want”  2 

1  ad  Q.  Fratr.  ii.  14.  3. 

2  ad  Att.  xii.  22.  I  may  add  in  a  footnote  a  final  startling  example  of 
the  recklessness  we  have  been  noting.  Decimus  Brutus  had,  in  March 


90 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Such  beino;  the  financial  method  of  Cicero  and 
his  brother,  we  cannot  be  surprised  to  find  that  the 
younger  generation  of  the  family  followed  faithfully 
in  the  footsteps  of  their  elders.  We  have  seen  that 
the  young  Marcus  had  a  large  allowance  at  Athens, 
and  on  the  whole  he  seems  to  have  kept  fairly  well 
within  it,  in  spite  of  some  trouble  ;  but  his  cousin 
the  younger  Quintus,  coming  to  see  his  uncle  in 
December  45,  showed  him  a  gloomy  countenance, 
and  on  being  asked  the  meaning  of  it,  said  that  he 
was  going  with  Caesar  to  the  Parthian  war  in  order 
to  avoid  his  creditors,  and  presumably  to  make 
money  to  pay  them  with.1  He  had  not  even  enough 
money  for  the  journey  out.  His  uncle  did  not  offer 
to  give  him  any,  but  he  does  not  seem  to  have  thought 
very  seriously  of  the  young  man’s  embarrassments. 

One  more  example  of  the  financial  dealings  of  the 
business  men  of  this  extraordinary  age,  and  we  will 
bring  this  chapter  to  an  end.  It  is  a  story  which 
has  luckily  been  preserved  in  Cicero’s  speech  in 
defence  of  a  certain  Rabirius  Postumus  in  the 
year  54,  who  was  accused  under  Caesar’s  law  de 
pecuniis  repetundis  (extortion  in  the  provinces).  It 
is  a  remarkable  revelation  of  all  the  most  striking 
methods  of  making  and  using  money  in  the  last  years 
of  the  Republic. 

44  b.c.,  a  capital  of  £320,000,  yet  next  year  lie  writes  to  Cicero  that  so 
far  from  any  part  of  his  private  property  being  unencumbered,  he  had 
encumbered  all  his  friends  with  debt  also  (ad  Fam.  xi.  10.  5).  But  this  was 
in  order  to  maintain  troops. 

1  ad  Att.  xiii.  42.  Cp.  xvi.  5. 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


9i 


The  father  of  this  Rabirius,  says  Cicero,  had  been 
a  distinguished  member  of  the  equestrian  order,  and 
“fortissimus  et  maximus  publicanus”  ;  not  greedy  of 
money,  but  most  liberal  to  his  friends — in  other 
words,  he  was  not  a  miser,  for  that  character  was 
rare  in  this  age,  but  lent  his  money  freely  in  order 
to  acquire  influence  and  consideration.  The  son 
took  up  the  same  line  of  business,  and  engaged  in 
a  wide  sphere  of  financial  operations.  He  dealt 
largely  in  the  stock  of  the  tax  -  companies ;  he 
lent  money  to  cities  in  several  provinces ;  he  lent 
money  to  Ptolemy  Auletes,  King  of  Egypt,  both 
before  he  was  expelled  from  his  kingdom  by  sedition, 
and  afterwards  when  he  was  in  Rome  in  59  and 
58,  intriguing  to  induce  the  senate  to  have  him 
restored.  Rabirius  never  doubted  that  he  would 
be  so  restored,  and  seems  to  have  failed  to  see 
the  probability  of  such  a  policy  being  contested  or 
quarrelled  about,  as  actually  happened  in  the 
winter  of  57-56.  He  lent,  and  persuaded  his  friends 
to  lend : 1  he  represented  the  king’s  cause  as  a  good 
investment ;  and  then,  like  the  investing  agent 
of  to-day  who  slips  so  easily  from  carelessness 
into  crime,  he  had  to  go  on  lending  more  and  more, 
because  he  feared  that  if  he  stopped  the  king  might 
turn  against  him. 

He  had  staked  the  mass  of  his  substance  on  a 
desperate  venture.  But  time  went  on  and  Ptolemy 

1  What  the  king  really  wanted  the  money  for,  was  to  bribe  the  senate  to 
restore  him. — Cic.  ad  Fam.  i.  1. 


92 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


was  not  restored,  and  without  the  revenues  of  his 
kingdom  he  of  course  could  not  pay  his  creditors. 
At  last,  at  the  end  of  the  year  56,  Gabinius,  then 
governor  of  Syria,  had  pressure  put  on  him  by  the 
creditors — among  them  perhaps  both  Caesar  and  Pom- 
peius — to  march  into  Egypt  without  the  authority 
of  the  senate.  He  took  Rabirius  with  him,  and,  in 
order  to  secure  the  re-payment,  the  latter  was  made 
superintendent  (Block-tj t?/?)  of  the  Egyptian  revenues.1 
Unluckily  for  him,  his  wily  debtor  did  after  all  turn 
against  him,  and  he  escaped  from  Egypt  with 
difficulty  and  with  the  loss  of  all  his  wealth.  When 
Gabinius  was  accused  de  repetundis  and  found  guilty 
of  accepting  enormous  sums  from  Ptolemy,  Rabirius 
was  involved  in  the  same  prosecution  as  having 
received  part  of  the  money ;  Cicero  defended  him, 
and  as  it  seems  with  success,  on  the  plea  that  equites 
were  not  liable  to  prosecution  under  the  lex  Julia. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  speech  he  drew  a  clever 
picture  of  his  unlucky  client’s  misfortunes,  and  de¬ 
clared  that  he  would  have  had  to  quit  the  Forum,  i.e. 
to  leave  the  Stock  Exchange  in  disgrace,  if  Caesar 
had  not  come  to  his  rescue  by  placing  large  sums  at 
his  disposal. 

What  Rabirius  did  was  simply  to  gamble  on  a 
gigantic  scale,  and  get  others  to  gamble  with  him. 
The  luck  turned  against  him,  and  he  came  utterly 
to  grief.  There  seems  indeed  to  have  been  a 
perfect  passion  for  dealing  with  money  in  this  wild 

1  Cic.  pro  Rab.  Post.  8.  22. 


III 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


93 


way  among  the  men  of  wealth  and  influence ;  it 
was  the  fancy  of  the  hour,  and  no  disgrace  attached 
to  it  if  a  man  could  escape  ruin.  Thus  the  vast 
capital  accumulated  —  the  sources  of  which  were 
almost  entirely  in  the  provinces  and  the  king¬ 
doms  on  the  frontiers  —  was  hardly  ever  used 
productively.  It  never  returned  to  the  region 
whence  it  came,  to  be  used  in  developing  its 
resources ;  the  idea  of  using  it  even  in  Italy  for 
industrial  undertakings  was  absent  from  the  mind 
of  the  gambler.  Those  numberless  villas,  of  which 
we  shall  speak  in  another  chapter,  were  homes 
of  luxury  and  magnificence,  not  centres  of  agri¬ 
cultural  industry.  There  are  indeed  some  signs 
that  in  this  very  generation  the  revival  of  Italian 
agriculture  was  beginning,  and  more  especially  the 
cultivation  of  the  olive  and  the  vine ;  Yarro,  some 
twenty  years  later,  could  claim  that  Italy  was  the 
best  cultivated  country  in  the  world.1  It  may  be 
that  the  din  of  the  “  insanum  forum  ”  and  its 
wild  speculation  has  prevented  our  hearing  of  the 
quiet  efforts  in  the  country  to  put  capital  to  a 
legitimate  productive  use.  But  of  the  social  life  of 
the  city  the  Forum  was  the  heart,  and  of  any  prudent 

1  Varro,  E.  E.  i.  2.  Ferrero  ( Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome)  has  the 
merit  of  having  discerned  the  signs  of  the  regeneration  of  Italian  agri¬ 
culture  at  this  time,  but  he  is  apt  to  push  his  conclusions  further  than 
the  evidence  warrants.  See  the  translation  of  his  work  by  A.  E.  Zimmern, 
i.  p.  124  ;  ii.  p.  131  foil.  The  statement  of  Pliny  quoted  by  him  (xv.  1.  3) 
that  oil  was  first  exported  from  Italy  in  the  year  52  b.c.,  is,  however,  of 
the  utmost  importance. 


CHAP. 


94  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

or  scientific  use  of  capital  the  Forum  knew  hardly 
anything. 

Of  the  two  classes  of  business  men  we  have  been 
describing,  the  tax-farmers  and  the  money-lenders,  it 
is  hard  to  say  which  wrought  the  most  mischief  in 
the  Empire ;  they  played  into  each  other’s  hands  in 
wringing  money  out  of  the  helpless  provincials. 
Together  too  they  did  incalculable  harm,  morally  and 
socially,  among  the  upper  strata  of  Roman  society  at 
home.  Economic  maladies  react  upon  the  mental 
and  moral  condition  of  a  State.  Where  the  idea  of 
making  money  for  its  own  sake,  or  merely  for  the 
sake  of  the  pleasure  derivable  from  excitement,  is 
paramount  in  the  minds  of  so  large  a  section  of 
society,  moral  perception  quickly  becomes  warped. 
The  sense  of  justice  disappears,  because  when  the 
fever  is  on  a  man  he  does  not  stop  to  ask  whether 
his  gains  are  ill-gotten  ;  and  in  this  age  the  only 
restriction  on  the  plundering  of  the  subjects  of  the 
Empire  was  a  legal  one,  and  that  of  no  great  efficacy. 
There  are  many  repulsive  things  in  the  exquisite 
poetry  of  Catullus,  but  none  of  them  jar  on  the 
modern  mind  quite  so  sharply  as  his  virulent  attacks 
on  a  provincial  governor  in  whose  suite  he  had  gone 
to  Bithynia  in  the  hope  of  enriching  himself,  and 
under  whose  just  administration  he  had  failed  to  do 
so.  There  is  lost  also  the  sense  of  a  duty  arising  out  of 
the  possession  of  wealth — the  feeling  that  it  should  do 
some  good  in  the  world,  or  at  least  be  in  part  applied 
to  some  useful  purpose.  Lastly,  the  exciting  pursuit 


Ill 


THE  MEN  OF  BUSINESS 


95 


of  wealth  helps  to  produce  a  curious  restlessness 
aud  instability  of  character,  of  which  we  have  many 
examples  in  the  age  we  are  studying.  “  Unstable  as 
water,  thou  shalt  not  excel,”  are  words  that  might 
be  applied  to  many  a  young  man  among  Cicero’s 
acquaintance,  and  to  many  women  also. 

No  sudden  operation  could  cure  these  evils — they 
needed  the  careful  and  gradual  treatment  of  a  wise 
physician.  As  in  so  many  other  ways,  so  here 
Augustus  showed  his  wonderful  instinct  as  a  social 
reformer.  The  first  requisite  of  all  was  an  age  of 
comparative  peace — a  healthy  atmosphere  in  which 
the  patient  could  recover  his  natural  tone.  Next  in 
importance  was  the  removal  of  the  incitement  to 
enrich  yourself  and  to  spend  illegally  or  unprofitably, 
and  the  revival  of  a  sense  of  duty  towards  the  State 
and  its  rulers.  Provincial  governors  were  made  more 
really  responsible,  and  a  scientific  census  revealed  the 
actual  tax -paying  capacity  of  the  provincials;  tax- 
farming  was  more  closely  superintended  and  gradually 
disappeared.  It  is  true  enough  that  even  under  the 
Empire  great  fortunes  were  made  and  lost,  but  the 
gambling  spirit,  the  wild  recklessness  in  monetary 
dealings,  are  not  met  with  again.  The  Roman  Forum 
ceased  to  be  insane,  and  Italy  became  once  more  the 
home  of  much  happy  and  useful  country  life.  The 
passionate  and  reckless  self-consciousness  of  Catullus 
is  succeeded  in  the  next  generation  by  the  calm 
sweet  hopefulness  of  Virgil ;  in  passing  from  the  one 
poet  to  the  other,  we  feel  that  we  are  leaving  behind 


96 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP.  Ill 


us  an  age  of  over-sensitive  self-seeking  and  entering 
on  one  in  which  duty  and  honour,  labour  on  the 
land  and  hard  work  for  the  State,  may  be  reckoned  as 
things  more  likely  to  make  life  worth  living  than  all 
the  accumulated  capital  of  a  Crassus. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY 

Above  the  men  of  business  of  equestrian  rank,  in 
social  standing  though  not  necessarily  in  wealth, 
there  was  in  Cicero’s  time  an  aristocracy  which  a 
Roman  of  that  day  would  perhaps  have  found  it  a 
little  difficult  to  explain  or  define  to  a  foreigner. 
Fortunately  all  foreigners  coming  to  Rome  would 
know  what  was  meant  by  the  senate,  the  great 
council  which  received  envoys  from  all  nations  outside 
the  Empire ;  and  the  stranger  might  be  told  in  the 
first  place  that  all  members  of  that  august  assembly, 
with  their  families,  were  considered  as  elevated  above 
the  equestrian  order,  and  as  forming  the  main  body 
of  the  aristocracy  proper.  But  if  the  informant  were 
by  chance  a  conservative  Roman  of  old  family,  he 
might  proceed  to  qualify  this  definition.  “There 
are  now  in  the  senate,”  he  might  say,  “  plenty  of 
men  who  are  only  there  because  they  have  held  the 
quaestorship,  which  Sulla  made  the  qualification  for 
a  seat,  and  there  are  many  equites  whom  Sulla  made 
into  senators  by  the  form  of  a  vote  of  the  people ; 
such  men,  even  the  great  orator  Cicero  himself,  I  do 

97  H 


98 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


not  reckon  as  really  members  of  the  nobility,  because 
they  do  not  belong  to  old  families  who  have  done  the 
State  good  service  in  past  time.  They  have  no  images 
of  their  ancestors  in  their  houses ;  they  come  from 
municipal  towns,  or  spring  from  some  low  family  in 
the  city  ;  they  may  have  raised  themselves  by  their 
talents,  perhaps  only  by  their  money,  but  they  have 
no  guarantee  of  antiquity,  their  names  are  not  in  our 
annals.  All  we  true  conservative  Romans  (and  a 
Roman  is  hardly  a  Roman  if  not  conservative)  pro¬ 
foundly  believe  that  a  man  whose  family  has  once 
attained  to  high  public  honour  and  done  good  public 
service,  will  be  a  safer  person  to  elect  as  a  magistrate 
than  one  whose  family  is  unknown  and  untried — a 
belief  which  is  surely  based  on  a  truth  of  human 
nature.  I  should  count  a  man  who  happens  not  to  be 
in  the  senate  himself,  for  want  of  wealth  or  inclina¬ 
tion,  but  whose  family  has  its  images  and  its  traditions 
of  great  ancestors,  as  far  more  truly  an  “optimate”  than 
most  of  these  new  men.  Fortunately  our  most  famous 
families,  whose  names  are  known  all  over  the  Empire, 
are  still  to  be  found  in  the  senate,  and  indeed  form  a 
powerful  body  there,  capable  of  resisting  to  the  last 
the  revolutionary  dangers  that  threaten  us.  The 
people  still  elect  to  magistracies  the  Aemilii,  Lutatii, 
Claudii,  Cornelii,  Julii,  and  many  more  families  that 
have  been  famous  in  our  history,  and  will,  I  trust,  con¬ 
tinue  to  elect  them  so  long  as  our  Republic  lasts.”  1 

1  The  Republic  was  not  to  last  long  ;  but  among  the  consuls  of  the  last 
years  of  its  existence  were  several  members  of  the  old  families. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  99 

There  was  indeed  a  glamour  about  these  splendid 
names,  as  there  is  about  the  titles  of  our  ancient 
noble  families ;  their  holders  may  almost  be  said  to  have 
claimed  high  office  as  a  right,  like  the  Whig  families 
of  the  Revolution  for  a  century  after  their  triumph. 
Though  we  may  use  the  word  in  a  wider  sense  in 
this  chapter,  these  grand  old  families  were  the  true 
aristocracy,  and  inspired  just  that  respect  in  the 
minds  of  men  outside  their  circle  which  is  still  so 
familiar  to  us  in  England.  Cicero  was  to  such  men 
an  “  outsider,”  a  novus  homo  ;  and  the  close  reader  of 
Cicero’s  letters,  if  he  is  looking  out  (as  he  should  be) 
for  Cicero’s  constantly  changing  attitude  of  mind 
as  he  addresses  himself  to  various  correspondents, 
cannot  fail  to  see  how  comparatively  awkward  and 
stilted  he  often  is  when  writing  to  one  of  these  great 
nobles,  with  whom  he  has  never  been  really  intimate ; 
and  how  easily  his  pen  glides  along  when  he  is  letting 
himself  talk  to  Atticus,  or  Poetus,  or  M.  Marius,  men 
who  were  outside  the  pale  of  nobility.  It  is  true 
that  he  is  sometimes  embarrassed  in  other  ways  when 
writing  to  great  personages,  as,  for  example,  Lentulus 
Spinther,  consul  in  57,  or  to  Appius  Claudius,  consul 
in  53 ;  but  had  they  been  men  of  his  own  kind  he 
never  would  have  felt  that  embarrassment  in  the 
same  degree.  When  writing  to  such  men  he  rarely 
or  never  indulges  in  those  little  sportive  jokes  or 
allusions  which  enliven  his  more  intimate  correspond¬ 
ence,  nor  does  he  tell  the  truth  so  strictly,  for  they 
might  not  always  care  to  hear  it. 


IOO 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Here  is  a  specimen  which  will  give  some  idea  of 
his  manner  in  writing  to  an  aristocrat :  he  is  con¬ 
gratulating  L.  Aemilius  Paullus,  who  secured  his 
election  to  the  consulship  in  the  summer  of  51  B.c.  : 

“  Though  I  never  doubted  that  the  Roman  people, 
considering  your  eminent  services  to  the  Republic 
and  the  splendid  position  of  your  family,  would 
enthusiastically  elect  you  consul  by  a  unanimous 
vote,  yet  I  felt  extreme  delight  when  the  news 
reached  me ;  and  I  pray  the  gods  to  render  your 
official  career  fortunate,  and  to  make  the  administra¬ 
tion  of  your  office  worthy  of  your  own  position  and 
that  of  your  ancestors.  .  .  .  And  would  that  it  had 
been  in  my  power  to  have  been  at  home  to  see  that 
wished-for  day,  and  to  have  given  you  the  support 
which  your  noble  services  and  kindness  to  me 
deserved !  But  since  the  unexpected  and  unlooked- 
for  accident  of  my  having  to  take  a  province  has 
deprived  me  of  that  opportunity,  yet,  that  I  may  be 
enabled  to  see  you  as  consul  actually  administering 
the  state  in  a  manner  worthy  of  your  position,  I 
earnestly  beg  you  to  take  care  to  prevent  my  being 
treated  unfairly,  or  having  additional  time  added 
to  my  year  of  office.  If  you  do  that,  you  will 
abundantly  crown  your  former  acts  of  kindness  to 
me.”  1 

This  Aemilius  Paullus,  like  Spinther  and  many 

1  ad  Fam.  xv.  12.  This  rather  stilted  letter  is  nearly  identical  with  one  to 
the  other  consul-designate,  another  aristocrat,  Claudius  Marcellus.  Cicero 
i3  in  each  case  trying  to  do  his  own  business,  while  writing  to  a  man  of 
higher  social  rank  than  his  own. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  ioi 

others,  belonged  to  a  respectable  but  somewhat 
characterless  type  of  aristocrat ;  these  formed  a  con¬ 
siderable  and  a  powerful  section  of  the  senate,  where 
they  were  an  obstacle  to  reform  and  administrative 
efficiency.  They  were  really  a  survival  from  the  old 
type  of  Roman  noble,  which  had  done  excellent  work 
in  its  day ;  men  in  whom  the  individual  had  been 
kept  in  strict  subordination  to  the  State,  and  whose 
personal  idiosyncrasies  and  ambitions  only  excited 
suspicion.  But  towards  the  end  of  the  Republican 
period  the  individual  had  free  play ;  at  no  time  in 
ancient  history  do  we  meet  with  so  many  various  and 
interesting  kinds  of  individuality,  even  among  the 
nobilitas  itself.  This  is  not  merely  the  result  of  the 
abundant  literature  in  which  their  traits  have  come 
down  to  us ;  it  was  a  fact  of  the  age,  in  which  the 
idea  of  the  State  had  fallen  into  the  background,  and 
the  individual  found  no  restraint  on  his  thoughts 
and  little  on  his  actions,  no  hindrance  to  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  his  capacity  either  for  good  or  evil.  Sulla, 
Catiline,  Pompeius,  Cato,  Clodius,  Caesar,  all  have 
their  marked  characteristics,  familiar  to  all  who  read 
the  history  of  the  Roman  revolution.  Caesar  is  the 
most  remarkable  example  of  strong  character  among 
the  men  of  high  aristocratic  descent,  and  it  is 
interesting  to  notice  how  entirely  he  was  without 
the  exclusive  tendency  which  we  associate  with 
aristocrats.  He  was  intimate  with  men  of  all  ranks  ; 
his  closest  friends  seem  to  have  been  men  who  were 
not  noble.  While  the  high  aristocrats  looked  down 


102 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


as  a  rule  on  Cicero  the  novus  homo,  and  for  some 
years  positively  hated  him,1  Caesar,  though  differ¬ 
ing  from  him  toto  coelo  in  politics,  was  always  on 
pleasant  terms  of  personal  intercourse  with  him ;  he 
had  a  charm  of  manner,  a  literary  taste,  and  a  genuine 
admiration  for  genius,  which  was  invariably  irre¬ 
sistible  to  the  sensitive  “novus  homo.”  With  Pom- 
pey,  though  he  trusted  him  politically  as  he  never 
trusted  Caesar,  Cicero  was  never  so  intimate.  They 
had  not  the  same  common  interests ;  Cicero  could 
laugh  at  Pompey  behind  his  back,  but  hardly  once  in 
his  correspondence  does  he  attempt  to  raise  a  jest 
about  Caesar. 

Thus  in  the  governing  or  senatorial  aristocracy 
we  find  men  of  a  great  variety  of  character,  from 
the  old-fashioned  nobilis,  exclusive  in  society  and 
obstructive  in  politics,  to  the  man  of  individual 
genius  and  literary  ability,  whether  of  blue  blood 
like  Caesar,  or  like  Cicero  the  scion  of  a  municipal 
family  which  has  never  gained  or  sought  political 
distinction.  But  for  the  purposes  of  this  chapter  we 
may  discern  and  discuss  two  main  types  of  character 
in  this  aristocracy  :  first,  that  on  which  the  new 
Greek  culture  had  worked  to  advantage,  not  destroy¬ 
ing  the  best  Roman  qualities,  but  drawing  them  into 

1  The  letters  of  the  years  58  to  54  are  full  of  bitter  allusions  to  the 
invidia  of  these  men,  which  culminate  in  the  long  and  windy  one  to 
Lentulus  Spinther  of  October  54,  where  he  actually  accuses  them  of  taking 
up  Clodius  in  order  to  spite  him.  In  a  confidential  note  to  Atticus  in  the 
spring  of  56,  he  told  him  that  they  hated  him  for  buying  the  Tusculan 
villa  of  the  great  noble  Catulus. — ad  Fam.  i.  9  ;  ad  Att.  iv.  5. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  103 

usefulness  in  new  ways ;  secondly,  that  on  which 
the  same  culture  had  worked  to  its  harm  by  taking 
advantage  of  weak  points  in  the  Roman  armour, 
sapping  the  true  Roman  quality  without  substituting 
any  other  excellence.  We  will  briefly  trace  the 
growth  of  these  two  types,  and  take  an  example  of 
each  among  Cicero’s  intimate  friends,  not  from  the 
famous  personages  familiar  to  every  one,  but  from 
eminent  and  interesting  men  of  whom  the  ordinary 
student  knows  comparatively  little. 

Ever  since  the  Hannibalic  war,  and  probably  even 
before  it,  Roman  nobles  had  felt  the  power  of  Greek 
culture;  they  had  begun  to  think,  to  learn  about 
peoples  who  were  different  from  themselves  in  habits 
and  manners,  and  to  advance,  the  best  of  them  at 
least,  in  wisdom  and  knowledge ;  and  this  is  true 
in  spite  of  the  unquestioned  fact  that  it  was  in  this 
same  era  that  the  seeds  were  sown  of  moral  and 
political  degeneracy.  We  shall  have  abundant  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  noting  the  effects  of  this  degeneracy  in  the 
last  age  of  the  Republic,  but  it  is  pleasant  to  dwell 
for  a  moment  on  that  more  wholesome  Greek 
influence  which  enticed  the  finer  minds  among  the 
Roman  nobility  into  a  new  region  of  culture, 
stimulating  thought  and  strengthening  the  springs 
of  conduct. 

Even  the  old  Cato  himself,  most  rigid  of  Roman 
conservatives,  was  not  unmoved  by  this  influence,1 
and  it  was  to  him  that  Rome  owed  the  introduction 


1  Plutarch,  Cato  major  2  and  12. 


104 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


of  Ennius,  the  greatest  literary  figure  of  that  age, 
into  Roman  society.1  But  the  first  genuine  example 
of  the  new  culture,  of  the  Hellenic  enthusiasm  of  the 
age,  is  to  be  found  in  Aemilius  Paullus,  the  conqueror 
of  Macedonia,  a  true  Roman  aristocrat  who  was 
delighted  to  learn  from  Greeks.  Plutarch’s  Life  of 
this  man  is  a  valuable  record  of  the  tendencies  of 
the  time.  After  his  failure  to  obtain  a  second 
consulship,  Plutarch  tells  us 2  that  he  retired  into 
private  life,  devoting  himself  to  religious  duties  and 
to  the  education  of  his  children,  training  these  in 
the  old  Roman  habits  in  which  he  had  himself  been 
trained,  but  also  in  Greek  culture,  and  that  with 
even  greater  enthusiasm.  He  had  about  them  Greek 
teachers,  not  only  of  grammar,  rhetoric,  and  philo¬ 
sophy,  but  of  the  fine  arts,  and  even  of  out -door 
pursuits,  such  as  hunting  (to  which  the  Romans  were 
not  greatly  addicted),  and  of  the  care  of  horses  and 
dogs ;  and  he  made  a  point  of  being  present  himself 
at  all  their  exercises,  bodily  and  mental.  The  result 
of  this  wholesome  Xenophontic  education  is  seen  in 
his  son,  the  great  Scipio  Aemilianus,  who  was 
adopted  into  the  family  of  the  Scipios  in  the  lifetime 
of  his  father.  Whatever  view  we  may  take  of  this 
great  man’s  conduct  in  war  and  politics,  there  can 
hardly  be  a  doubt  that  the  Romans  themselves  were 
right  in  treasuring  his  memory  as  one  of  the  best  of 

1  Corn.  Nepos,  Cato  1.  4,  who  remarks  that  Cato’s  return  from  his 
quaestorship  in  Sardinia  with  Ennius  in  his  train  was  as  good  as  a  splendid 
triumph. 

2  Plut.  Atm.  Paul.  6  ad  Jin. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  105 

their  race.  When  we  put  all  the  facts  of  his  life 
together,  from  his  early  youth,  of  which  his  friend 
Polybius  has  left  us  a  most  beautiful  picture,1  to  his 
sudden  and  probably  violent  death  in  the  maturity 
of  his  powers,  we  are  compelled  to  believe  that  he 
was  really  a  man  of  wide  sympathies,  a  strong  sense 
of  justice  which  guided  him  steadily  through  good 
report  and  ill,  perfect  purity  of  life,  and  hatred  of  all 
that  was  low  and  bad,  whether  in  rich  or  poor.  He 
was  not,  like  his  father,  a  Roman  aristocrat  patronis¬ 
ing  Greek  culture ; 2  in  him  we  see  a  perfectly  natural 
and  mature  combination  of  the  noblest  qualities  of 
the  Roman  and  the  wholesomest  qualities  of  the 
Greek.  “  It  was  an  awakening  truth,”  says  a  great 
authority,  “  in  the  minds  of  Romans  like  Scipio,  that 
intellectual  culture  must  be  built  upon  a  foundation 
of  moral  rectitude  :  and  such  a  foundation  they  could 
find  in  the  storehouse  of  their  own  domestic  tradi¬ 
tions.”  3  When  Cicero,  who  held  him  to  be  the 
greatest  of  Romans,  wrote  his  dialogue  on  the  State 
(de  Republica),  with  the  new  idea  pervading  it  of 
the  moral  and  political  ascendancy  of  a  single  man, 
he  made  Scipio  the  hero  and  the  one  ascendant 
figure  in  his  work,  and  ended  it  with  an  imitation  of 
the  Platonic  “  myth,”  in  the  form  of  a  “  dream  of 
Scipio.” 

Scipio  gathered  round  him  a  circle  of  able  and 

1  Polybius,  xxxii.  9-16. 

a  The  difference  between  him  and  his  father,  especially  in  politics,  is 
sketched  in  Plutarch’s  Life  of  the  latter,  ch.  xxxviii. 

3  F.  Leo,  in  Die  griechische  und  lateinische  Literatur,  p.  337. 


io6 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


cultured  meu,  both  Roman  and  Greek,  including 
almost  every  living  Roman  of  ability,  and  among  the 
Greeks  the  historian  Polybius  and  the  philosopher 
Panaetius,  of  whom  we  shall  have  more  to  learn  in 
the  course  of  this  volume.  Of  this  circle  the  best 
and  ablest  men  of  Cicero’s  earlier  days  were  mentally 
the  children,  and  his  own  views  both  of  literature 
and  politics  were  largely  formed  upon  the  Scipionic 
tradition.  Indeed  to  understand  the  mental  and  moral 
furniture  of  the  Roman  mind  in  the  Ciceronian  age,  it 
is  absolutely  necessary  to  study  that  of  the  generation 
which  made  that  mind  what  it  was ;  but  here  space 
can  only  be  found  to  point  out  how  the  enlighten¬ 
ment  of  the  Scipionic  circle  opened  out  new  ways  in 
manners,  in  literature,  in  philosophical  receptivity, 
and  lastly  in  the  study  of  the  law,  which  was  destined 
to  be  Rome’s  greatest  contribution  to  civilisation. 

Manners,  the  demeanour  of  the  individual  in  social 
intercourse,  are  a  valuable  index,  if  not  an  entirely 
conclusive  one,  of  the  mental  and  moral  tone  of 
society  in  any  age.  Ease  and  courteousness  of 
bearing  mean,  as  a  rule,  that  the  sense  of  another’s 
claims  as  a  human  being  are  always  present  to  the 
mind.  Whatever  be  the  shortcomings  of  the  last 
age  of  the  Republic,  we  must  give  due  credit  to  the 
fact  that  in  their  outward  demeanour  towards  each 
other  the  educated  men  of  that  age  almost  invariably 
show  good  breeding.  It  is  true  enough  that  public 
vituperation,  in  senate  or  law-courts,  was  a  fact  of 
every  day,  and  the  wealth  of  violent  personal  abuse 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  107 

which  a  gentleman  like  Cicero  could  expend  on  one 
whom  for  the  time  he  hated,  or  who  had  done  him 
some  wrong,  passes  all  belief.1  But  the  history  of 
this  vituperation  is  a  curious  one  ;  it  was  a  traditional 
method  of  hostile  oratory,  and  sprang  from  an  old 
Roman  root,  the  tendency  to  defamation  and  satire, 
which  may  itself  be  attributed  in  part  to  the  Italian 
custom  of  levelling  abuse  at  a  public  man  (e.g.  at  his 
triumph)  in  order  to  avert  evil  from  him.2  To  single 
out  a  man’s  personal  ugliness,  to  calumniate  his 
ancestry  in  the  vilest  terms, — these  were  little  more 
than  traditional  practices,  oratorical  devices,  which 
the  rhetorical  education  of  the  day  encouraged,  and 
which  no  one  took  very  seriously.3  But  we  are 
concerned  in  this  chapter  mainly  with  private  life  ; 
and  there  we  find  almost  universal  consideration 
and  courtesy.  In  the  whole  of  the  Ciceronian  corre¬ 
spondence  there  is  hardly  a  letter  that  does  not  show 
good  breeding,  and  there  are  many  that  are  the  natural 
result  of  real  kindly  feeling  and  true  sympathy. 

A  good  example  of  the  best  type  of  Roman 
manners  is  to  be  found  in  Plutarch’s  Life  of  Gaius 
Gracchus,  the  younger  contemporary  of  Scipio,  who 
had  married  his  sister.  Plutarch  draws  a  picture  of 
him  so  vivid  that  by  common  consent  it  is  ascribed  to 

1  The  best  specimens,  or  rather  the  worst,  are  to  be  found  in  the  speeches 
in  Pisonem,  in  Vatinium,  and  in  the  Second  Philippic. 

2  The  most  instructive  passage  on  vituperatio  is  Cicero’s  defence  of  Caelius, 
ch.  3.  Cp.  Quintilian  iii.  7.  1  and  19.  On  the  custom  at  triumphs,  etc.,  see 
Munro’s  Elucidations  of  Catullus,  p.  75  foil,  for  most  valuable  remarks. 

3  We  have  courteous  letters  from  Cicero  both  to  Piso  and  Vatinius,  only 
a  few  years  after  he  had  depicted  them  in  public  as  monsters  of  iniquity. 


CHAP. 


108  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

the  memoirs  of  some  one  who  knew  him.  “  In  all  his 
dealings  with  men,”  says  the  biographer,  “  he  was 
always  dignified  yet  always  courteous  ”  ;  that  is,  while 
he  inspired  respect,  men  felt  also  that  he  would  do 
anything  in  his  power  for  them.  That  this  was  said 
of  him  by  a  Roman,  and  not  invented  for  him  by 
Plutarch,  seems  probable  because  the  combination  is 
one  peculiarly  Roman  ;  so  Livy,  when  he  wishes  to 
describe  the  finest  type  of  Roman  character,  says 
that  a  certain  man  was  “  baud  minus  libertatis 
alienae  quam  suae  dignitatis  memor.”1  This  same 
combination  meets  us  also  in  the  little  pictures  of  the 
social  life  of  cultivated  men  which  Cicero  has  left  us 
in  some  of  his  dialogues.  There  the  speakers  are 
usually  of  the  nobility,  often  distinguished  members 
of  senatorial  families,  as  in  the  de  Oratore,  where  the 
chief  personae  are  Crassus,  Antonius,  and  Scaevola, 
the  conservative  triumvirate  of  the  day.  They  all 
seem  grave,  or  but  seldom  gently  jocular,  respectful  to 
each  other,  and  perhaps  a  trifle  tedious ;  they  never 
quarrel,  however  deeply  they  may  differ,  and  we 
may  guess  that  they  did  not  hold  their  opinions 
strongly  enough  to  urge  them  to  open  rupture.  We 
seem  to  see  the  same  grave  faces,  with  rather  long 
noses  and  large  mouths,  which  meet  us  in  the 
sculptures  of  Augustus’  Ara  Pacis,2 — full  of  dignity, 
but  a  little  wanting  in  animation. 

1  Plut.  C.  Gracchus,  ch.  6  ad  Jin.  Cp.  Livy  vii.  33. 

2  These  characteristic  figures  may  be  most  conveniently  seen  in  Mrs. 
Strong’s  interesting  volume  on  Roman  sculpture,  p.  42  foil. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  109 

There  is  one  singular  exception  to  the  good 
manners  of  the  period ;  but  as  the  result  rather  of 
affectation  than  of  nature,  it  may  help  to  prove  our 
rule.  Again  and  again  in  Plutarch’s  Life  of  Cato 
the  younger  the  mention  of  his  rudeness  proves  the 
strength  of  the  tradition  about  him.  It  was  said 
that  this  lost  him  the  consulship,  as  he  declined  to 
make  himself  agreeable  in  the  style  expected  from 
candidates.1  Even  in  a  letter  to  Cicero,  an  old  friend, 
though  not  actually  rude,  he  is  absurdly  patronising 
and  impertinent  to  a  man  many  years  his  senior,  and 
writes  in  very  bad  taste.  Probably  the  enmity 
between  him  and  Caesar  arose  or  was  confirmed  in 
this  way,  as  Cato  always  made  a  point  of  being 
rudest  to  those  whom  he  most  disliked.  He  fancied 
that  he  was  imitating  his  great  ancestor,  and  assert¬ 
ing  the  virtue  of  good  old  Roman  bluntness  against 
modern  Greek  affectation  ;  he  did  not  in  the  least  see 
that  he  was  himself  a  curious  example  of  Roman  affec¬ 
tation,  shown  up  by  the  real  amenities  of  intercourse, 
for  which  Romans  had  largely  to  thank  Greece.2 

In  literature  too  the  average  capacity  of  this 
aristocracy  was  high,  though  the  greatest  literary 
figures  of  the  age,  if  we  except  Caesar,  do  not,  strictly 
speaking,  belong  to  it ;  Cicero  was  a  novus  homo,  and 
Lucretius  and  Catullus  were  not  of  the  senatorial 

1  Plut.  Cato,  ch.  1.  ad  fin.  Blanditia  was  the  word  for  civility  in  a 
candidate:  “opus  est  magnopere  blanditia,”  says  Quintus  Cicero,  de pet. 
eons.  §  41. 

2  There  is  a  pleasanter  picture  of  Cato,  sitting  in  Lucullus’  library  and 
in  his  right  mind,  in  Cic.  de  Finibus  iii.  2.  7. 


I  IO 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


order.  But  the  new  education,  as  we  shall  see  later 
on,  was  admirably  calculated  to  train  men  in  the  art 
of  speaking  and  writing,  if  not  in  the  habit  of 
independent  thinking ;  and  among  the  nobles  who 
reaped  the  full  fruits  of  this  education  every  one 
could  write  in  Latin  and  probably  also  in  Greek,  and 
if  he  aimed  at  public  distinction,  could  speak  with¬ 
out  disgracing  himself  in  the  senate  and  the  courts. 
Oratory  wras,  in  fact,  the  staple  product  of  the  age, 
and  the  chief  raison  d'etre  of  its  literary  activity. 
Long  ago  the  practice  had  begun  of  writing  out 
successful  speeches  delivered  in  the  senate,  in  the 
courts,  or  at  funerals ;  the  means  of  publication  were 
easy,  as  a  consequence  of  the  number  of  Greek  slaves 
who  could  act  as  copyists,  and  thus  oratory  formed 
the  basis  of  a  prose  literature  which  is  essentially 
Roman,1  rooted  in  the  practical  necessities  of  the  life 
of  the  Roman  noble,  though  deeply  tinged  with  the 
Greek  ideas  and  forms  of  expression  acquired  in  the 
process  of  education  in  vogue.  Treatises  on  rhetoric, 
the  art  of  effective  expression  in  prose,  form  an 
important  part  of  it ;  two  of  them  still  survive  from 
the  time  of  Sulla, — the  Rhetorica  ad  Herennium 
of  an  unknown  author,  and  Cicero’s  early  treatise 
de  Inventione.  Later  on  Cicero  wrote  his  admir¬ 
able  dialogue  de  Oratore  and  other  works  on  the 
same  subject,  ending  with  his  Brutus ,  a  catalogue 
raisonnee,  invaluable  to  us,  of  all  the  great  Roman 
orators  down  to  his  own  time. 

1  See  Leo,  in  work  already  cited,  p.  338  foil. 


IV 


THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  hi 


In  history  writing  the  standard  was  not  so  high. 
The  rhetorical  education  made  men  good  professional 
orators,  but  indifferent  and  dilettante  historians,  and 
the  example  of  more  accurate  historical  investiga¬ 
tion  and  reflection  set  by  Polybius  was  not  followed, 
except  perhaps  by  Caelius  Antipater  in  the  Gracchan 
age.1  History  was  affected  for  the  worse  by  the 
rhetorical  art,  as  indeed  poetry  was  destined  also  to 
be ;  Sallust,  though  we  owe  much  to  him,  was  in  fact 
an  amateur,  who  thought  more  of  style  and  expres¬ 
sion  than  of  truth  and  fact.  Caesar,  who  did  not 
profess  to  be  a  historian,  but  only  to  provide  the 
materials  for  history,2  stands  alone  in  making  facts 
more  important  than  words,  and  rarely  troubles  his 
reader  with  speeches  or  other  rhetorical  superfluities.3 
Biographies  and  autobiographies  were  fashionable  ;  of 
the  former  only  those  of  Cornelius  Nepos,  one  of 
Cicero’s  many  friends,  have  come  down  to  us,  and 
none  of  the  latter,  but  we  know  a  long  list  of  eminent 
men  who  wrote  their  own  memoirs,  including  Catulus 
the  elder,  Rutilius  the  famous  victim  of  equestrian 
judges,  Sulla,  and  Lueullus.  But  far  above  all  other 
prose  writers  of  the  age  stand  two  men,  neither  of 
them  Roman  by  birth,  but  yet  members  of  the 


1  For  this  remarkable  writer,  of  whose  work  only  a  few  fragments  survive, 
see  Leo,  op.  cit.  p.  340,  and  Schanz,  Gesch.  der  rom.  Liter atur,  i.  p.  278  foil. 

2  Cicero,  Brutus,  75,  262. 

3  The  other  Caesarian  writers  followed  him  more  or  less  successfully  ; 
Hirtius,  who  wrote  the  eighth  book  of  the  Gallic  War,  and  the  authors  of 
the  Alexandrian,  African,  and  Spanish  Wars  (the  first  possibly  by  Asinius 
Pollio). 


I  12 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


senatorial  order ;  the  one  a  man  of  encyclopaedic 
learning,  with  what  we  may  almost  call  a  scientific 
interest  in  the  subjects  which  he  treated  in  awkward 
and  homely  Latin,  the  other  a  man  of  comparatively 
little  learning,  but  gifted  with  so  exquisite  a  sense  of 
the  beautiful  in  expression,  and  at  the  same  time 
with  a  humanity  so  real  and  in  that  day  so  rare,  that 
it  is  not  without  good  cause  that  he  has  recently 
been  called  the  most  highly  cultured  man  of  all 
antiquity.1  Of  Varro’s  numerous  works  we  have 
unluckily  but  few  survivals  ;  of  Cicero’s  we  have 
still  such  a  mass  as  will  for  ever  provide  ample 
material  for  studying  the  life,  the  manners,  the 
thought  of  his  day. 

A  large  part  of  this  mass  consists  of  the  corre¬ 
spondence  of  which  we  are  making  such  frequent 
use  in  these  chapters.  Letter-writing  is  perhaps  the 
most  pleasing  and  genuine  of  all  the  literary  activities 
of  the  time ;  men  took  pains  to  write  well,  yet  not 
with  any  definite  prospect  of  publication,  such  as  was 
the  motive  a  century  later  in  the  days  of  Seneca  and 
Pliny.  The  nine  hundred  and  odd  letters  of  the 
Ciceronian  collection  are  most  of  them  neither  mere 
communications  nor  yet  rhetorical  exercises,  but  real 
letters,  the  intercourse  of  intimate  friends  at  a 
distance,  in  which  their  inmost  thoughts  can  often 
be  seen.  Cicero  is  indeed  apt  to  become  rhetorical 
even  in  his  letters,  when  writing  under  excitement 
about  politics ;  but  the  most  delightful  letters  in  the 

1  Leo,  op.  cit.  p.  355. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  113 

collection  are  those  in  which  he  writes  to  his  friends 
in  happy  and  natural  language  of  his  daily  life  and 
occupations,  his  books,  his  villas,  his  children,  his 
joys  and  sorrows.  It  is  strange  that  the  great 
historian  of  Rome  in  our  time  entirely  failed  to  see 
the  charm  and  the  value  of  these  letters,  as  of  all 
Cicero’s  writings;  his  countrymen  have  now  agreed 
to  differ  from  him,  and  to  restore  a  great  writer  to 
his  true  position. 

In  philosophical  receptivity  too  the  brightest  and 
finest  minds  among  this  aristocracy  show  an  ability 
which  is  almost  astonishing,  when  we  consider  that 
there  had  been  no  education  in  Rome  worth  the 
name  until  the  second  century  b.c.1  I  use  the  word 
receptivity,  because  the  Romans  of  our  period  never 
really  learnt  to  think  for  themselves ;  they  never 
grappled  with  a  problem,  or  struck  out  a  new  line 
of  thought.  But  so  far  as  we  can  judge  by  Cicero’s 
philosophical  works,  the  only  ones  of  his  age  which 
have  come  down  to  us,  the  power  to  read  with 
understanding  and  to  reproduce  with  skill  was 
unquestionably  of  a  high  order.  The  opportunities 
for  study  were  not  wanting ;  private  libraries  were 
numerous,  and  all  Cicero’s  friends  who  had  collected 
books  were  glad  to  let  him  have  the  use  of  them.2 
Greek  philosophers  were  often  domesticated  in  wealthy 
families,  and  could  discourse  with  the  statesman  when 

1  See  below,  eh.  vi. 

*  The  passage  just  cited  from  the  de  Finibus  (iii.  27)  introduces  us  to  the 
library  of  Lucullus  at  Tusculum,  whither  Cicero  had  gone  to  consult  books, 
and  where  he  found  Cato  sitting  surrounded  by  volumes  of  Stoic  treatises. 

I 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


II4 

he  had  leisure  from  public  business.  Much  of  this 
was  no  more  than  fashion,  and  real  endeavour  and 
earnestness  were  rare ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  one 
philosophical  system,  more  especially  on  its  ethical 
side,  took  real  possession  of  the  best  type  of  Roman 
mind,  and  had  permanent  and  saving  influence 
on  it. 

Stoicism  was  brought  to  Rome  by  Panaetius  of 
Rhodes,  the  intimate  friend  of  Scipio,  a  mild  and 
tactful  Greek  whose  Rhodian  birth  gave  him  perhaps 
some  advantage  in  associating  with  the  old  allies  of 
his  state.  He  came  to  Rome  at  a  critical  moment, 
when  even  the  best  men  were  drifting  into  pure 
material  self-seeking ;  and  the  results  of  his  teaching 
were  during  two  centuries  so  wholesome  and  inspiring 
that  we  may  almost  think  of  him  as  a  missionary. 
The  ground  had  been  prepared  for  him  in  some  sense 
by  Polybius,  who  introduced  him  to  Scipio  and  his 
circle,  and  who  was  then  engaged  in  writing  his 
history.  From  Polybius  the  Romans,  the  best  of 
them  at  least,  first  learnt  to  realise  their  own  empire 
and  the  great  change  it  had  wrought  in  the  world ; 
to  think  about  what  they  had  done  and  the  qualities 
that  enabled  them  to  do  it.  From  Panaetius  they 
were  to  learn  a  philosophical  creed  which  might 
direct  and  save  them  in  the  future,  which  might 
serve  as  ballast  in  public  and  private  life,  just  when 
the  ship  was  beginning  to  drift  in  moral  helplessness. 
He  was  the  founder  of  a  school  of  practical  wisdom, 
singularly  well  adapted  to  the  Roman  character  and 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  115 

intellect,  which  were  always  practical  rather  than 
speculative ;  and  far  better  suited  to  ordinary  human 
life  than  the  old  rigid  and  austere  Stoic  ethics,  of 
which  the  younger  Cato  was  the  only  eminent 
Roman  disciple.  From  what  we  know  of  Panaetius’ 
ethical  teaching, — and  in  the  first  two  books  of 
Cicero’s  work,  de  Ojfficiis,  we  have  a  fairly  complete 
view  of  it, — we  do  not  find  the  old  doctrine  that 
absolute  wisdom  and  justice  are  the  only  ends  to 
pursue,  and  everything  else  indifferent ;  a  doctrine 
which  put  the  old-fashioned  Stoic  out  of  court  in 
public  life.  The  relative  element,  the  useful,  played 
a  great  part  in  the  teaching  of  Panaetius.  Though 
his  system  is  based  on  the  highest  principles  to 
which  moral  teaching  could  then  appeal,  it  did  not 
exclude  the  give  and  take,  the  compromise  without 
which  no  practical  man  of  affairs  can  make  way, 
nor  yet  the  wealth  and  bodily  comforts  that  secure 
leisure  for  thought.1 

Panaetius’  mission  was  carried  on  by  another 
Rhodian  philosopher,  the  famous  Posidonius,  who 
lived  long  enough  to  know  Cicero  himself  and  many 
of  his  contemporaries ;  a  man  less  inspiring  perhaps 
than  Panaetius,  but  of  greater  knowledge  and  attain¬ 
ment  ;  a  traveller,  geographer,  and  a  man  of  the 
world,  whose  writings  on  many  subjects,  though  lost 
to  us,  really  lie  at  the  back  of  a  great  part  of  the 

1  The  fragments  of  Panaetius  are  collected  by  H.  N.  Fowler,  Bonn,  1885. 
The  best  account  of  his  teaching  known  to  me  is  in  Sehmekel,  Philosophie 
der  Mittleren  Stoa,  p.  18  foil.  But  all  can  read  the  two  first  books  of  the 

de  Officiis. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


I  16 

Roman  literary  output  of  his  time.1  He  was  the 
disciple  of  Panaetius ;  envoy  from  Rhodes  to  Rome 
in  the  terrible  year  86  ;  and  later  on  the  inmate  of 
Roman  families,  and  the  admired  friend  of  Cicero, 
Pompeius,  and  Varro.  Philosophy  was  only  one  of 
the  many  pursuits  of  this  extraordinary  man,  whose 
literary  and  historical  influence  can  be  traced  in 
almost  every  leading  Roman  author  for  a  century  at 
least ;  but  his  philosophical  importance  was  during 
his  lifetime  perhaps  predominant.  The  generation 
that  knew  him  was  rich  in  Stoics ;  for  example, 
Aelius  Stilo,  the  master  of  Varro,  “  doctissimus  eorum 
temporum,”  as  Gellius  calls  him  ; 2  Rutilius,  who  was 
mentioned  just  now  as  having  written  memoirs ;  and 
among  others  probably  the  great  lawyer  Mucius 
Scaevola.  Cato,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  a  follower 
of  the  Roman  school  of  Stoicism,  but  of  the  older  and 
uncompromising  doctrine ;  but  Cicero,  though  never 
a  professed  Stoic,  was  really  deeply  influenced,  and 
towards  the  end  of  his  life  almost  fascinated,  by  a 
creed  which  suited  his  humanity  while  it  stimulated 
his  instinct  for  righteousness.2  And,  like  Cicero, 
many  other  men  of  serious  character  felt  the  power 
of  Stoicism  almost  unconsciously,  without  openly 
professing  it. 

Stoicism  then  was  in  several  ways  congenial  to 
the  Roman  spirit,  but  in  one  direction  it  had  an 

1  Leo,  op.  cit.  p.  360.  Schniekel  deals  comprehensively  with  Posidonius’ 
philosophy,  as  reflected  in  Varro  and  Cicero,  p.  85  foil. 

2  See  Professor  Reid's  introduction  to  Cicero's  Academica,  p.  17.  Cicero 
considered  Posidonius  the  greatest  of  the  Stoics. — lb.  p.  5. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  1 17 

inspiring  influence  which  has  been  of  lasting  moment 
to  the  world.  Up  to  the  time  of  Panaetius  and  the 
Scipionic  circle  the  Roman  idea  and  study  of  law  had 
been  of  a  crabbed  practical  character,  wanting  in 
breadth  of  treatment,  destitute  of  any  philosophical 
conception  of  the  moral  principles  which  lie  behind 
all  law  and  government.  The  Stoic  doctrine  of 
universal  law  ruling  the  world — a  divine  law,  emanat¬ 
ing  from  the  universal  Reason — seems  to  have 
called  up  life  in  these  dry  bones.  It  might  be  held 
by  a  Roman  Stoic  that  human  law  comes  into  exist¬ 
ence  when  man  becomes  aware  of  the  divine  law, 
and  recognises  its  claim  upon  him.  Morality  is  thus 
identical  with  law  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word, 
for  both  are  equally  called  into  being  by  the  Right 
Reason,  which  is  the  universal  primary  force.1  It  is 
not  possible  here  to  show  how  this  grand  and  elevating 
idea  of  law  may  have  affected  Roman  jurisprudence, 
but  we  will  just  notice  that  the  first  quasi -philo¬ 
sophical  treatment  of  law  is  found  following  the  age 
of  Panaetius  and  the  Scipionic  circle  ;  that  the  phrase 
ius  gentium  then  begins  to  take  the  meaning  of 
general  principles  or  rules  common  to  all  peoples,  and 
founded  on  “natural  reason”;2  and  that  this  led  by 
degrees  to  the  later  idea  of  the  Law  of  Nature,  and 
to  the  cosmopolitanism  of  the  Roman  legal  system, 

1  Cic.  de  Legibus  i.  affords  many  examples  of  this  view,  which  was  ap¬ 
parently  that  of  Posidonius,  e.g.  6.  18  and  8.  25.  Cp.  de  Repuhlica,  iii.  22.  33. 

2  Gaius  i.  1 ;  Cic.  de  Officiis  iii.  5.  23  ;  Mommsen,  Staatsrecht,  iii.  p.  604, 
based  on  the  research  of  H.  Nettleship  in  Journal  of  Philology,  vol.  xiii. 
p.  175.  See  also  Solim,  Institutes  of  Roman  Law,  ch.  ii. 


1 18 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


which  came  to  embrace  all  peoples  and  degrees  in  its 
rational  and  beneficent  influence.  If  the  Greek  had 
a  genius  for  beauty,  and  the  Jew  for  righteousness, 
the  Roman  had  a  genius  for  law  ;  and  the  power 
of  Stoicism  in  ennobling  and  enriching  his  native 
conception  of  it  is  probably  not  to  be  easily  over¬ 
estimated. 

Thus  behind  the  stormy  scenes  of  public  life  in 
this  period  there  is  a  process  going  on  which  will 
be  of  value  not  only  to  the  Roman  Empire  but  to 
modern  civilisation.  It  was  carried  on  more  especially 
by  two  men  of  the  highest  character,  Q.  Mucius 
Scaevola,  Cicero’s  adviser  in  his  early  days,  and 
often  his  model  in  later  life  ;  and  Servius  Sulpicius 
Rufus,  his  exact  contemporary  and  lifelong  friend. 
Neither  Scaevola  nor  Sulpicius  were,  so  far  as  we 
know,  professed  disciples  of  Stoicism ;  but  that  they 
applied  perhaps  half  unconsciously  the  principles  of 
Stoicism  to  their  own  legal  studies  is  almost  certain. 
The  combination  of  legal  training  and  Stoic  influence 
(whether  direct  or  unconscious)  seems  to  have  been 
capable  of  bringing  the  Roman  aristocratic  character 
to  a  high  pitch  of  perfection  ;  and  it  will  be  pleasant 
to  take  this  friend  of  Cicero,  whose  public  career  we 
can  clearly  trace,  and  one  or  two  of  whose  letters  we 
still  possess,  as  our  example  of  a  really  well  spent  life 
in  an  age  when  time  and  talent  were  constantly 
abused  and  wasted. 

Sulpicius  and  Cicero  were  born  in  the  same  year, 
106 ;  they  went  hand  in  hand  in  early  life,  and 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  1 19 

remained  friends  till  their  deaths  in  43,  Snlpicins 
dying  a  few  months  before  Cicero.  They  were 
both  attached  in  early  youth  to  the  Scaevola  just 
mentioned,  the  first  of  the  great  series  of  scientific 
Roman  lawyers.  But  the  consulship  of  Cicero  made 
a  wide  divergence  in  their  lives.  In  that  year 
Sulpicius  was  a  candidate  for  the  consulship  and 
failed  ;  and  then,  resigning  further  attempts  to  obtain 
the  highest  honour,  he  retired  for  the  next  twelve 
years  into  private  life,  devoting  himself  to  the  work 
which  has  made  his  name  immortal.  His  writings 
are  lost ;  nothing  remains  of  them  but  a  few  chance 
fragments  and  allusions :  but  he  was  reckoned  the 
second  of  the  great  writers  on  legal  subjects,  and 
it  is  probable  that  he  contributed  as  much  as  any  of 
them  to  the  work  of  making  Roman  law  what  it  has 
been  as  a  power  in  the  world,  a  factor  in  modern 
civilisation.  For  he  treated  it,  as  his  friend  said  of 
him,1  with  the  hand  and  mind  of  an  artist,  laying 
out  his  whole  subject  and  distributing  it  into  its 
constituent  parts,  by  definition  and  interpretation 
making  clear  what  seemed  obscure,  and  distinguishing 
the  false  from  the  true  in  legal  principle.  In  the 
splendid  panegyric  pronounced  on  him  in  the  senate 
after  his  death,2  Cicero  again  emphatically  declared 
him  to  be  unrivalled  in  jurisprudence.  In  beautiful 
but  untranslatable  language  he  claims  that  he  was 

1  Brutus  41.  151,  where  he  plainly  ranks  him  above  Scaevola.  The 
passage  is  a  most  interesting  one,  deserving  careful  attention. 

2  The  Ninth  Philippic  :  the  passage  referred  to  in  the  text  is  5.  10  foil. 


120 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


“  non  magis  iuris  consultus,  quam  iustitiae,” — an 
encomium  which  all  great  lawyers  might  well  envy ; 
he  aimed  rather  at  enabling  men  to  be  rid  of  litigation 
than  at  encouraging  them  to  engage  in  it. 

From  such  passages  we  might  conjecture,  even  if 
we  knew  nothing  more  about  him,  that  Sulpicius  was 
a  man  of  very  fine  clay,  of  real  liumanitas  in  the 
widest  sense  of  that  expressive  word ;  and  this  is 
entirely  borne  out  in  other  ways.1  Emerging  at  last 
from  retirement,  he  stood  again  for  the  consulship  in 
52  B.C.,  and  was  elected.  The  year  of  his  office,  51, 
was  the  first  in  which  the  enemies  of  Caesar,  with  Cato 
at  their  head,  began  to  attack  his  position  and  clamour 
for  his  recall  from  his  command  ;  this  violent  hostility 
Sulpicius  tried,  not  without  temporary  success,  to 
restrain,  and  the  fact  that  a  man  of  so  just  a  mind 
should  have  taken  this  line  is  one  of  the  best 
arguments  for  the  reasonableness  of  Caesar’s  cause.2 
When  war  broke  out  he  was  greatly  perplexed  how 
to  act ;  his  breadth  of  view  made  decision  difficult, 
and  he  seems  to  have  been  at  all  times  more  a  student 
than  a  man  of  action.  With  some  heart-burnings  he 
joined  Caesar  in  the  struggle,  and  accepted  from  him 
the  government  of  Achaia ;  it  was  at  this  time  that 
he  wrote  the  famous  letter  of  consolation  to  Cicero 
on  the  death  of  his  beloved  daughter  Tullia,  which 

1  I  omit  pro  Murena,  ehs.  vii.  and  xxi.,  for  want  of  space.  Sulpicius  was 
opposing  Cicero  in  this  case,  and  the  latter’s  allusions  to  him  are  useful 
specimens  of  the  good  breeding  spoken  of  above. 

2  See  Dio  Cassius  xl.  59  ;  and  Cic.  ad  Fam.  iv.  1  and  3,  to  Sulpicius,  with 
allusions  to  his  consulship. 


IV 


THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  121 


is  full  of  true  feeling  and  kindliness,  though  evidently 
composed  with  effort,  if  not  with  difficulty.  After 
Caesar’s  death  he  of  course  acted  with  Cicero  against 
Antony,  and  in  the  spring  of  43,  making  always  for 
peace  and  good-will,  he  gave  his  life  for  his  country 
in  a  way  that  claims  our  admiration  more  really 
than  the  suicide  of  Cato  the  professional  Stoic ;  he 
headed  an  embassy  to  Antony,  though  dangerously 
ill  at  the  time,  and  died  in  this  last  effort  to 
obtain  a  hearing  for  the  voice  of  justice.  He  has 
a  monumentum  aere  perennius  in  the  speech  of  his 
old  friend  urging  the  senate  to  vote  him  a  public 
funeral  and  a  statue,  as  one  who  had  laid  down  his 
life  for  his  country. 

We  must  now  turn  to  consider  how  the  mis¬ 
chievous  side  of  the  new  Greek  culture,  in  combina¬ 
tion  with  other  tendencies  of  the  time,  found  its 
way  into  weak  points  in  the  armour  of  the  Roman 
aristocracy. 

The  pursuit  of  ease  and  pleasure,  to  which  the 
attainment  of  wealth  and  political  power  were  too 
often  merely  subordinated,  is  a  leading  characteristic 
of  the  time.  It  is  seen  in  many  different  forms,  in 
many  different  types  of  character  ;  but  at  the  root 
of  the  whole  corruption  is  the  spirit  of  the  coarser 
side  of  Epicureanism.  As  with  Roman  Stoicism,  so 
too  with  Roman  Epicureanism,  it  is  not  so  much  the 
professed  holding  of  philosophical  tenets  that  affected 
life ;  in  the  case  of  the  latter  system,  it  was  the 


122 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


coincidence  of  its  popularity  with  the  decay  of  the 
old  Roman  faith  and  morality,  and  with  the  abnormal 
opportunities  of  self-indulgence.  Cato  as  a  professed 
Stoic,  Lucretius  as  an  enthusiastic  Epicurean,  stand 
quite  apart  from  the  mass  of  men  who  were  actuated 
one  way  or  the  other  by  these  philosophical  creeds. 
The  majority  simply  played  with  the  philosophy, 
while  following  the  natural  bent  of  their  individual 
character ;  but  such  dilettanteism  was  often  quite 
enough  to  affect  that  character  permanently  for  good 
or  evil. 

“  Epicureanism  popularised  inevitably  turns  to 
vice.”  Was  it  really  popular  at  Rome?  Cicero  tells 
us  in  a  valuable  passage  1  that  one  Amafinius  had 
written  on  it,  and  that  a  great  number  of  copies  of  his 
book  were  sold,  partly  because  the  arguments  were  easy 
to  follow,  partly  because  the  doctrine  was  pleasant,  and 
partly  too  because  men  failed  to  get  hold  of  anything 
better.  The  date  of  this  Amafinius  is  uncertain,  but 
it  is  probable  that  Cicero  is  here  speaking  of  the 
latter  part  of  the  second  century  b.c.  ;  and  he  goes 
on  to  say  that  other  writers  took  up  the  same  line 
of  teaching,  and  established  it  over  the  whole  of  Italy 
(Italiam  totam  occupaverunt).  If  this  was  in  the  time 
of  the  Social  and  Civil  Wars,  of  the  proscriptions, 
of  increasing  crime  and  self-seeking,  we  can  well 
understand  that  the  doctrine  was  popular.  We  have 
a  remarkable  example  of  it  in  the  life  of  a  public 
man  of  Cicero’s  own  time,  the  object  of  the  most 

1  Tuac.  Disp.  iv.  3.  6. 


xv  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  123 

envenomed  invective  that  he  ever  uttered.1  We 
cannot  believe  a  tithe  of  what  he  says  about  this  man, 
Calpurnius  Piso,  consul  in  58  ;  but  in  this  particular 
matter  of  the  damage  done  him  by  Epicurean  teach¬ 
ing  we  have  independent  evidence  which  confirms  it. 
Piso,  then  a  young  man,  made  acquaintance  with  a 
Greek  of  this  school  of  thought,  learnt  from  him 
that  pleasure  was  the  sole  end  of  life,  and  failing  to 
appreciate  the  true  meaning  and  bearing  of  the 
doctrine,  fell  into  the  trap.  It  was  a  dangerous 
doctrine,  Cicero  says,  for  a  youth  of  no  remarkable 
intelligence  ;  and  the  tutor,  instead  of  being  the 
young  man’s  guide  to  virtue,  was  used  by  him  as 
an  authority  for  vice.2  This  Greek  was  a  certain 
Philodemus,  a  few  of  whose  poems  are  preserved  in 
the  Greek  Anthology  ;  and  a  glance  at  them  will  show 
at  once  how  dangerous  such  a  man  would  be  as  the 
companion  of  a  Roman  youth.  He  may  not  himself 
have  been  a  bad  man — Cicero  indeed  rather  suggests 
the  contrary,  calling  him  vere  humanus — but  the  air 
about  him  was  poisonous.  In  his  pupil,  if  we  can 
trust  in  the  smallest  degree  the  picture  drawn  of 
him  by  Cicero,  we  may  see  a  specimen  of  the  young 
men  of  the  age  whose  talents  might  have  made  them 

1  The  speech  in  Pisonem  ;  cp.  the  de  Provinciis  consularibus,  1-6.  This 
Piso  was  the  father  of  Caesar’s  wife  Calpurnia,  who  survives  in  Shakespeare. 

2  The  difficult  passage  in  which  Cicero  describes  the  perversion  of  this 
character  under  the  influence  of  Philodemus,  has  been  skilfully  translated 
by  Dr.  Mahaffy  in  his  Greek  World  under  Roman  Sway,  p.  126  foil.;  and  the 
reader  may  do  well  to  refer  to  his  whole  treatment  of  the  practical  result  of 
Epicureanism. 


124 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


useful  in  the  world,  but  for  the  strength  of  the 
current  that  drew  them  into  self-indulgence. 

Not  only  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  but  its  correlative, 
the  avoidance  of  work  and  duty,  can  be  abundantly 
illustrated  in  this  age ;  and  this  too  may  have  had 
a  subtle  connexion  with  Epicurean  teaching,  which 
had  always  discouraged  the  individual  from  distrac¬ 
tion  in  the  service  of  the  State,  as  disturbing  to  the 
free  development  of  his  own  virtue.  Sulla  did  much 
hard  work,  but  made  the  serious  blunder  of  retiring 
to  enjoy  himself  just  when  his  new  constitutional 
machinery  needed  the  most  careful  watching  and 
tending.  Lucullus,  after  showing  a  wonderful  capacity 
for  work  and  a  greater  genius  for  war  than  perhaps 
any  man  of  his  time,  retired  from  public  life  as  a 
millionaire  and  a  quietist,  to  enjoy  the  wealth  that 
has  become  proverbial,  and  a  luxury  that  is  astonish¬ 
ing,  even  if  we  make  due  allowance  for  the  exagger¬ 
ation  of  our  accounts  of  it.  To  his  library  we  have 
already  been  introduced ;  those  who  would  see  him 
in  his  banqueting-hall,  or  rather  one  of  the  many 
in  his  palace,  may  turn  to  the  fortieth  chapter  of 
Plutarch’s  most  interesting  Life  of  him,  and  read  the 
story  there  told  of  the  dinner  he  gave  to  Cicero  and 
Pompeius  in  the  “  Apollo  ”  dining-room.1 

The  same  cynical  carelessness  about  public  affairs 
and  neglect  of  duty,  as  compared  with  private  ease  or 
advantage,  seems  to  have  been  characteristic  of  the 

1  This  chapter  is  also  useful  as  illustrating  the  urbanity  of  manners,  for 
Lucullus  and  Pompeius  were  political  enemies. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  125 

ordinary  senator.  Active  and  busy  in  bis  own  interest, 
be  was  indifferent  to  that  of  the  State.  There  are 
distinct  signs  that  the  attendance  in  the  senate  was 
not  good.  When  Cicero  was  away  in  Cilicia  his 
correspondent  writes  of  difficulties  in  getting  together 
a  sufficient  number  even  for  such  important  business 
as  the  settlement  of  provincial  governments.1  On 
the  other  hand,  much  private  business  was  done,  and 
many  jobs  perpetrated,  in  a  thin  senate ;  in  66  a 
tribune  proposed  that  no  senator  should  be  dispensed 
from  the  action  of  a  law  unless  two  hundred  were 
present.2  It  was  in  such  a  thin  senate,  we  may  be 
sure,  that  the  virtuous  Brutus  was  dispensed  from 
the  law  which  forbade  lending  to  foreign  borrowers 
in  Rome,  and  thus  was  enabled  to  lend  to  the  miser¬ 
able  Salaminians  of  Cyprus  at  48  per  cent,  and  to 
recover  his  money  under  the  bond.3  Writing  to  his 
brother  in  December  57,  Cicero  speaks  of  business 
done  in  a  senate  full  for  the  time  of  year,  which  was 
midwinter,  just  before  the  Saturnalia,  when  only  two 
hundred  were  present  out  of  about  six  hundred.  In 
February  54,  a  month  when  the  senate  had  always 
much  business  to  get  through,  it  was  so  cold  one  day 
that  the  few  members  present  clamoured  for  dismissal 
and  obtained  it.4  And  when  the  senate  did  meet  there 
was  a  constant  tendency  to  let  things  go.  No  reform 
of  procedure  is  mentioned  as  even  thought  of,  at  a 


1  ad  Fam.  viii.  5  Jin.  ;  viii.  9.  2. 

2  See  the  introduction  of  Asconius  to  Cicero  pro  Gornelio,  ed.  Clark,  p.  58. 

*  ad  Att.  v.  21.  11,  13.  4  ad  Q.  frat.  ii.  1.  1  ;  ii.  10.  1. 


126 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


time  when  it  was  far  more  necessary  than  in  our 
Parliament ;  business  was  talked  about,  postponed, 
obstructed,  and  personal  animosities  and  private 
interests  seem,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  cor¬ 
respondence  of  the  time,  to  have  been  predominant. 
With  wearisome  iteration  the  letters  speak  of  nothing 
done,  of  business  postponed,  or  of  the  passing  of  some 
senatus  consultum,the  utter  futility  of  which  is  obvious 
even  now.1  Even  the  magistrates  seem  to  have  been 
growing  careless  ;  we  hear  of  a  praetor  presiding  in 
the  court  de  repetundis  who  had  not  taken  the 
trouble  to  acquaint  himself  with  the  text  of  the  law 
which  governed  its  procedure ; 2  and  that  praetors 
were  worse  than  careless  about  their  action  in  civil 
cases  is  proved  by  another  law  of  the  same  tribune 
Cornelius  mentioned  just  now,  “  that  praetors  should 
abide  by  the  rules  laid  down  in  their  edicts.”  3 

But  all  these  futilities,  and  much  of  the  same  kind 
outside  of  the  senate,  together  with  the  quarrels  of 
individuals,  the  chances  and  incidents  of  elections, 
and  all  such  gossip  as  forms  the  staple  commodity  of 
the  society  papers  of  to-day,  were  a  source  of  infinite 
delight  to  another  type  of  pleasure -loving  public 
man,  the  last  to  be  illustrated  here. 

If  the  older  noble  families  were  apathetic  and  idle, 

1  The  letters  written  immediately  after  Cicero’s  return  from  exile  are  the 
best  examples  of  this  paralysis  of  business,  e.g.  ad  Fam.  i.  4 ;  ad  Q.  F.  ii.  3. 
See  a  useful  paper  by  P.  Groebe  in  Klio,  vol.  v.  p.  229. 

2  This  appears  from  a  letter  of  Caelius  to  Cicero  in  51. — ad  Fam.  viii.  8.  3. 

3  Asconius  in  Cornelianum,  ed.  Clark,  p.  59.  “Ut  praetores  ex  edictis 
suis  perpetuis  ius  dioerent.” 


,V  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  127 


there  were  plenty  of  young  men,  rising  most  often 
from  the  class  below,  whose  minds  were  intensely 
active — active  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  but  pleasure 
in  the  comparatively  harmless  form  of  amusement  and 
excitement.  One  of  these,  the  son  of  a  banker  at 
Puteoli,  Marcus  Caelius  Rufus,  stands  out  as  a  living 
portrait  in  his  own  letters  to  Cicero,  of  which  no 
fewer  than  seventeen  are  preserved.1  Of  his  early 
years  too  we  know  a  good  deal,  told  us  in  the  speech 
in  defence  of  him  spoken  by  Cicero  in  the  year  56  ; 
and  these  combined  sources  of  information  make  him 
the  most  interesting  figure  in  the  life  of  his  age. 
M.  Boissier  has  written  a  delightful  essay  on  him 
in  his  Ciceron  et  ses  amis,  and  Professor  Tyrrell  has 
done  the  like  in  the  introduction  to  the  fourth 
volume  of  his  edition  of  Cicero’s  letters ;  but  they  have 
treated  him  less  as  a  type  of  the  youth  of  his  day 
than  as  the  friend  and  pupil  of  Cicero.  Caelius  will 
always  repay  fresh  study ;  he  was  amusing  and 
interesting  to  his  contemporaries,  and  so  he  will  be 
for  ever  to  us.  He  is  a  veritable  Proteus — you 
never  know  what  shape  he  will  take  next ; 

Omnia  transformat  sese  in  miracula  rerum — 

we  can  trace  no  less  than  six  such  transformations 
in  the  story  of  his  life.  And  this  instability,  let 
us  note  at  once,  was  not’  the  restlessness  of  a  jaded 
roue,  but  the  coruscation  of  a  clever  mind  wholly 
without  principle,  intensely  interested  in  his  monde, 


1  All  his  letters  are  in  the  eighth  book  of  those  ad  Familiares. 


128 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


in  the  life  in  which  he  moved,  with  all  its  enjoyment 
and  excitement. 

Caelius’  father  brought  his  son  to  Cicero,  as  soon 
as  he  had  taken  his  toga  virilis,  to  study  law  and 
oratory,  and  Cicero  was  evidently  attracted  by  the 
bright  and  lively  boy  ;  he  never  deserted  him,  and 
the  last  letter  of  Caelius  to  his  old  preceptor  was 
written  only  just  before  his  own  sad  end.  But 
Cicero  was  not  the  man  to  keep  an  unstable  character 
out  of  mischief;  he  loved  young  men,  especially 
clever  ones,  and  was  apt  to  take  an  optimistic  view 
of  them,  as  he  did  of  his  own  son  and  nephew. 
Caelius,  always  attracted  by  novelty,  left  Cicero  and 
attached  himself  to  Catiline ;  and  for  this  vagary,  as 
well  as  for  his  own  want  of  success  in  controlling  his 
pupil,  Cicero  rather  awkwardly  and  amusingly  apolo¬ 
gises  in  the  early  chapters  of  his  speech  in  his 
defence.  Wild  oats  must  be  sown,  he  says ;  when  a 
youth  has  given  full  fling  to  his  propensities  to  vice, 
they  will  leave  him,  and  he  may  become  a  useful 
citizen, — a  dangerous  view  of  a  preceptor’s  duty, 
which  reminds  us  of  the  treatment  of  the  boy  Nero 
by  his  philosopher  guardian  long  afterwards.1 

Caelius  escaped  the  fate  of  Catiline  and  his  crew 
only  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  another  clique  not  less 
dangerous  for  his  moral  welfare.  He  became  one  of 
a  group  of  brilliant  young  men,  among  whom  were 
probably  Catullus  and  Calvus  the  poets,  who  were 
lovers,  and  passionate  lovers,  of  the  infamous  Clodia ; 

1  Tacitus,  Annals  xin.  2:  “  voluptatibus  concessis.  ” 


XV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  129 

they  were  needy,  she  found  them  money,  and  they 
hovered  about  her  like  moths  about  a  candle.  In 
such  a  life  of  passion  and  pleasure  quarrels  were 
inevitable.  If  the  Lesbia  of  Catullus  be  Clodia,  as 
we  may  believe,  she  had  thrown  the  poet  over  with 
a  light  heart.  It  was  apparently  of  his  own  free 
will  that  Caelius  deserted  her  :  in  revenge  she  turned 
upon  him  with  an  accusation  of  theft  and  attempt 
to  poison.  What  truth  there  was  in  the  charges  we 
do  not  really  know,  but  Cicero  defended  him  success¬ 
fully,  and  in  this  way  we  come  to  know  the  details 
of  this  unsteady  life. 

In  gratitude,  and  possibly  in  shame,  Caelius  now 
returned  to  his  old  friend,  and  abandoned  the  whole 
ring  of  his  vicious  companions  for  diligent  practice 
in  the  courts,  where  he  obtained  considerable  fame 
as  an  orator.  A  fragment  of  a  speech  of  his  pre¬ 
served  by  Quintilian  shows,  as  Professor  Tyrrell  ob¬ 
serves,  wonderful  power  of  graphic  and  picturesque 
utterance.1  Cicero,  writing  of  him  after  his  death,2  says 
that  he  was  at  this  time  on  the  right  side  in  politics, 
and  that  as  tribune  of  the  plebs  in  56  he  successfully 
supported  the  good  cause,  and  checked  revolutionary 
and  seditious  movements.  All  was  going  well  with 
him  until  Cicero  went  as  governor  to  Cilicia  in  51. 
Cicero  seems  to  have  felt  complete  confidence  in  him, 
and  invited  him  to  become  his  confidential  political 
correspondent ;  fifteen  out  of  his  seventeen  letters 
were  written  in  this  capacity.  These  letters  show 

2  Brutus  79.  273. 

K 


1  Quintil.  iv.  2.  123. 


1 3° 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


us  the  man  as  clearly  as  if  we  had  his  diary  before 
us.  Caelius  is  no  idle  scamp  or  lazy  Epicurean ; 
his  mind  is  constantly  active  :  nothing  escapes  his 
notice  :  the  minutest  and  most  sordid  things  delight 
him.  He  is  bright,  happy,  witty,  frivolous,  and 
doubtless  lovable.  It  is  amusing  to  see  how  Cicero 
himself  now  and  again  catches  the  infection,  and 
tries  (in  vain)  to  write  in  the  same  frivolous  manner.1 
Caelius  has  some  political  insight ;  he  sees  civil  war 
approaching,  but  he  takes  it  all  as  a  game,  and  on 
the  eve  of  events  which  were  to  shake  the  world  he 
trifles  with  the  symptoms  as  though  they  were  the 
silliest  gossip  of  the  capital.2  In  none  of  these 
letters  is  there  the  smallest  vestige  of  principle  to  be 
found.  On  the  very  eve  of  civil  war  he  tells  Cicero 3 
that  as  soon  as  war  breaks  out  the  right  thing  to  do 
is  to  join  the  stronger  side.  Judging  Caesar’s  side 
to  be  the  stronger,  he  joined  it  accordingly,  and  did 
his  best  to  induce  Cicero  to  do  the  same.  As 
M.  Boissier  happily  says,  he  never  cared  to  “  menager 
ses  transitions.” 

He  had,  however,  to  discover  that  if  to  change 
over  to  Caesar  was  the  safer  course,  to  turn  a  political 
somersault  once  more,  to  try  and  undermine  the 
work  of  the  master,  meant  simply  ruin.  We  have 
the  story  of  his  sixth  and  last  transformation  from 

1  e.g  .ad  Fam.  ii.  13.  3. 

2  Exactly  the  same  combination  of  real  interest  in,  and  frivolous  treat¬ 
ment  of,  politics  is  to  be  found  in  the  early  letters  of  Horace  Walpole  to  Sir 
H.  Mann,  especially  those  of  the  year  1742. 

3  ad  Fam.  viii.  14.  3. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  131 

Caesar  himself,  who  was  not,  however,  in  Italy  at  the 
time.1  Credit  in  Italy  had  been  seriously  upset  by 
the  outbreak  of  Civil  War,  and  Caesar  had  been  at 
much  pains  to  steady  it  by  an  ordinance  which  has 
been  alluded  to  in  the  last  chapter.2  In  48  Caelius 
was  praetor ;  in  the  master’s  absence  he  suddenly 
took  up  the  cause  of  the  debtors,  and  tried  to  evoke 
appeals  against  the  decisions  of  his  colleague  Tre- 
bonius, — a  great  lawyer  and  a  just  man.  Failing 
in  this,  he  started  as  a  downright  revolutionary, 
proposing  first  the  abolition  of  house-rent,  and  finally 
the  abolition  of  all  debts ;  and  Milo,  in  exile  at 
Massilia,  was  summoned  to  help  him  to  raise  Italy 
against  Caesar.  This  was  too  much,  and  both  were 
quickly  caught  and  killed  as  they  were  stirring 
up  gladiators  and  other  slave -bands  among  the 
latifundia  of  South  Italy. 

Caelius’  letters  give  us  a  chance  of  seeing  what 
that  life  of  the  Forum  really  was  which  so  fascinated 
the  young  men  of  the  day,  and  some  of  the  old,  such 
as  Cicero  himself.  We  can  see  these  children  play¬ 
ing  on  the  very  edge  of  the  crater,  like  the  French 
noblesse  before  the  Revolution.  In  both  cases  there 
was  a  semi-consciousness  that  the  eruption  was  not 
far  off, — but  they  went  on  playing.  What  was  it 
that  so  greatly  amused  and  pleased  them  ? 

What  Caelius  is  always  writing  of  is  mainly 
elections  and  canvassing,  accusations  and  trials,  games 
and  shows.  Elections  he  treats  as  pure  sport,  as  a 

1  Caesar,  Bell.  Civ.  iii.  20  foil.  2  See  above,  p.  86  ;  cp.  p.  58. 


132 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


kind  of  enjoyable  gambling,  or  as  a  means  of  spiting 
some  one  whom  you  want  to  annoy.  With  elections 
accusations  were  often  connected :  if  a  man  were 
accused  before  his  election  he  could  not  continue  to 
stand  ;  if  condemned  after  it  he  was  disqualified  ;  here 
were  ways  in  which  personal  spite  might  deprive  him 
of  success  at  the  last  moment.1  Accusations,  too, 
were  of  course  the  best  means  by  which  an  ambitious 
young  man  could  come  to  the  front.  The  whole 
number  of  trials  mentioned  by  Caelius  is  astonishing ; 
sometimes  there  is  such  a  complication  of  them  as  is 
difficult  to  follow.  Every  one  is  ready  to  lay  an 
accusation,  without  the  smallest  regard  for  truth. 
Young  Appius  Claudius  accuses  Servilius,  and  makes 
a  mess  of  the  attack,  while  the  praetor  mismanages 
the  conduct  of  the  trial,  so  that  nothing  comes  of  it ; 
but  finally  Appius  is  himself  accused  by  the  Servilii 
de  vi,  in  order  to  keep  him  from  further  attacks  on 
Servilius  ! 2  Appius  the  father  quarrelled  with  Caelius 
and  egged  on  others  to  accuse  him,  though  he  was 
curule  aedile  at  the  time.  “  Their  impudence  was  so 
boundless  that  they  secured  that  an  information 
should  be  laid  against  me  for  a  very  serious  crime 
(under  the  Scantinian  law).  Scarcely  had  Pola  got 
the  words  out  of  his  mouth,  when  I  laid  an  informa¬ 
tion  under  the  same  law  against  the  censor,  Appius. 
I  never  saw  a  more  successful  stroke  !  ”  3 

Of  the  games,  and  the  panthers  to  be  exhibited  at 


1  So  for  example  Servaeus  is  disqualified,  ad  Fam.  viii.  4.  1. 
3  lb.  viii.  8.  2.  5  lb.  8.  12. 


IV  THE  GOVERNING  ARISTOCRACY  133 

them,  about  which  Caelius  is  for  ever  worrying  his 
friend  in  Cilicia,  we  shall  see  something  in  another 
chapter.  There  is  plenty  of  other  gossip  in  these 
letters,  and  gossip  often  about  unsavoury  matters 
which  need  not  be  noticed  here.  It  lets  in  a  flood  of 
light  upon  the  causes  of  the  general  incompetence 
and  inefficiency  ;  the  life  of  the  Forum  was  a  demoral¬ 
ising  one : 

Uni  6e  atque  eidem  studio  omnes  dedere  et  arti 
uerba  dare  ut  caute  possint,  pugnare  dolose  : 
blanditia  certare,  bonum  simulare  uirum  se  : 
insidias  facere,  ut  si  hostes  sint  omnibus  omnes.1 

From  what  has  been  said  in  this  sketch  it  should 
be  clear  that  we  have  in  the  aristocracy  of  this  period 
a  complicated  society,  the  various  aspects  of  which 
can  hardly  be  united  in  a  single  picture.  It  is  partly 
a  hereditary  aristocracy,  with  all  the  pride  and 
exclusiveness  of  a  group  of  old  families  accustomed 
to  power  and  consequence.  It  is  in  the  main  a 
society  of  gentlemen,  dignified  in  manner,  and  kindly 
towards  each  other,  and  it  is  also  a  society  of  high 
culture  and  literary  ability,  though  poor  in  creative 
genius,  and  unimaginative.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
is  a  class  which  has  lost  its  interest  in  the  State,  and 
is  energetic  only  when  pursuing  its  own  interests : 
pleasure -loving,  luxurious,  gossiping,  trifling  with 
serious  matters,  short-sighted  in  politics  because 
anxious  only  for  personal  advance.  “  Rari  nantes  in 
gurgite  vasto  ”  are  the  men  who  are  really  in  earnest, 

1  Lucilius,  Fragm.  9,  ed.  Baehrens. 


i34 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP.  IV 


but  they  are  there ;  we  must  not  forget  that  in 
Lucretius  and  Cicero  this  society  produced  one  of  the 
greatest  poets  and  one  of  the  most  perfect  prose 
writers  that  the  world  treasures ;  in  Sulpicius  a 
lawyer  of  permanent  value  to  humanity,  and  in 
Caesar  not  only  an  author  and  a  scholar  but  a  man 
of  action  unrivalled  in  capacity  and  industry. 


CHAPTER  Y 

MARRIAGE  :  AND  THE  ROMAN  LADY 

In  order  to  appreciate  the  position  of  women  of 
various  types  in  the  society  we  are  examining,  it  is 
necessary  to  make  it  clear  what  Roman  marriage 
originally  and  ideally  meant.  In  any  society,  it  will 
be  found  that  the  position  and  influence  of  woman 
can  be  fairly  well  discerned  from  the  nature  of  the 
marriage  ceremony  and  the  conditions  under  which  it 
is  carried  out.  At  Rome,  in  all  periods  of  her  history, 
a  iustum  matrimonium,  i.e.  a  marriage  sanctioned  by 
law  and  religion,  and  therefore  entirely  legal  in  all 
its  results,  was  a  matter  of  great  moment,  not  to  be 
achieved  without  many  forms  and  ceremonies.  The 
reason  for  this  elaboration  is  obvious,  at  any  rate  to 
any  one  who  has  some  acquaintance  with  ancient  life 
in  Greece  or  Italy.  As  we  shall  see  later  on,  the 
house  was  a  residence  for  the  divine  members  of  the 
family,  as  well  as  the  human  ;  the  entrance,  therefore, 
of  a  bride  into  the  household, — of  one,  that  is,  who 
had  no  part  nor  lot  in  that  family  life-— meant  some 
straining  of  the  relation  between  the  divine  and 

135 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


136 

human  members.  The  human  part  of  the  family 
brings  in  a  new  member,  but  it  has  to  be  assured  that 
the  divine  part  is  willing  to  accept  her  before  the  step 
taken  can  be  regarded  as  complete.  She  has  to  enter 
the  family  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  able  to  share  in  its 
sacra ,  i.e.  in  the  worship  of  the  household  spirits,  the 
ancestors  in  their  tombs,  or  in  any  special  cult 
attached  to  the  family.  In  order  to  secure  this 
eligibility,  she  was  in  the  earliest  times  subjected  to 
a  ceremony  which  was  clearly  of  a  sacramental 
character,  and  which  had  as  its  effect  the  transference 
of  the  bride  from  the  hand  {maims)  of  her  father, 
i.e.  from  absolute  subjection  to  him  as  the  head 
of  her  own  family,  to  the  hand  of  her  husband,  i.e. 
to  absolute  subjection  to  him  as  the  head  of  her  new 
family. 

This  sacramental  ceremony  was  called  confar- 
reatio,  because  a  sacred  cake,  made  of  the  old  Italian 
grain  called  far,  and  offered  to  Jupiter  Farreus,1  was 
partaken  of  by  bride  and  bridegroom,  in  the  presence 
of  the  Pontifex  Maximus,  the  Flamen  Dialis,  and  ten 
other  witnesses.  At  such  a  ceremony  the  auspices 
had  of  course  been  taken,  and  apparently  a  victim 
was  also  slain,  and  offered  probably  to  Ceres,  the 
skin  of  which  was  stretched  over  two  seats  {sellae), 

1  This  probably  means  that  the  deity  was  believed  to  reside  in  the  cake, 
and  that  the  communicants  not  only  entered  into  communion  with  each 
other  in  eating  of  it,  but  also  with  him.  It  is  in  fact  exactly  analogous  to 
the  sacramental  ceremony  of  the  Latin  festival,  in  which  each  city  partook 
of  the  sacred  victim,  in  that  case  a  white  heifer.  See  Fowler,  Roman 
Festivals,  p.  96  and  reff. 


V 


MARRIAGE 


*37 


on  which  the  bride  and  bridegroom  had  to  sit.1 
These  details  of  the  early  form  of  patrician  marriage 
are  only  mentioned  here  to  make  the  religious  char¬ 
acter  of  the  Roman  idea  of  the  rite  quite  plain ;  in 
other  words,  to  prove  that  the  entrance  of  a  bride 
into  a  family  from  outside  was  a  matter  of  very  great 
difficulty  and  seriousness,  not  to  be  achieved  without 
special  aid  and  the  intervention  of  the  gods.  We 
may  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  new  mater- 
familias  was  in  some  sort  a  priestess  of  the  household, 
and  that  she  must  undergo  a  solemn  initiation  before 
assuming  that  position.  And  we  may  still  further 
illustrate  the  mystical  religious  nature  of  the  whole 
rite,  if  we  remember  that  throughout  Roman  history 
no  one  could  hold  the  priesthood  of  Jupiter  (fla- 
minium  diale),  or  that  of  Mars  or  Quirinus,  or  of  the 
Rex  sacrorum,  who  had  not  been  born  of  parents 
wedded  by  confarreatio,  and  that  in  each  case  the 
priest  himself  must  be  married  by  the  same  ceremony.2 
This  last  mentioned  fact  may  also  serve  to  remind 
us  that  it  was  not  only  the  family  and  its  sacra,  its 
life  and  its  maintenance,  that  called  for  the  cere¬ 
monies  making  up  a  iustum  matrimonium,  but  also 
the  State  and  its  sacra,  its  life  and  its  maintenance.3 
As  confarreatio  had  as  its  immediate  object  the 
providing  of  a  materfamilias  fully  qualified  in  all 

1  This  interesting  custom  is  recorded  by  Servius  ( ad  Aen.  iv.  374).  For 
the  whole  ceremony  of  confarreatio  see  De  Marchi,  La  Religione  nella  vita 
domestica,  p.  155  foil.  ;  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  32  foil.  Cp.  also 
Gaius  i.  112. 

2  Gaius  l.c. 


3  Cic.  de  Off.  i.  17.  54. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


138 

her  various  functions,  and  as  its  further  object  the 
providing  of  persons  legally  qualified  to  perform  the 
most  important  sacra  of  the  state ;  so  marriage,  in 
whatever  form,  had  as  its  object  at  once  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  the  family  and  its  sacra  and  the  pro¬ 
duction  of  men  able  to  serve  the  State  in  peace 
and  war.  To  be  a  Roman  citizen  you  must  be  the 
product  of  a  iustum  matrimonium.  From  this 
initial  fact  flow  all  the  iura  or  rights  which  together 
make  up  citizenship ;  whether  the  private  rights, 
which  enable  you  to  hold  and  transfer  and  to  inherit 
property  under  the  shelter  of  the  Roman  law,1  or 
the  public  rights,  which  protect  your  person  against 
violence  and  murder,  and  enable  you  to  give  your 
vote  in  the  public  assembly  and  to  seek  election  to 
magistracies.2 

Marriage  then  was  a  matter  of  the  utmost  import¬ 
ance  in  Roman  life,  and  in  all  the  forms  of  it  we  find 
this  importance  marked  by  due  solemnity  of  ritual. 
In  two  other  forms,  besides  confarreatio,  the  bride 
could  be  brought  under  the  hand  of  her  husband, 
viz.,  coemptio  and  usus,  with  which  we  are  not  here 
specially  concerned  ;  for  long  before  the  last  century 
of  the  Republic  all  three  methods  had  become  practi¬ 
cally  obsolete,  or  .  were  only  occasionally  used  for 
particular  purposes.  In  the  course  of  time  it  had 
been  found  more  convenient  for  a  woman  to  remain 

1  i.e.  ius  commercii  and  ius  connubii :  the  former  enabling  a  man  to 
claim  the  protection  of  the  courts  in  all  cases  relating  to  property,  the  latter 
to  claim  the  same  protection  in  cases  of  disputed  inheritance. 

2  Le.  ius  provocationis,  ius  suffragii,  ius  honorum. 


y 


MARRIAGE 


139 


after  her  marriage  in  the  hand  of  her  father,  or  if 
he  were  dead,  in  the  “  tutela  ”  of  a  guardian  (tutor), 
than  to  pass  into  that  of  her  husband ;  for  in  the 
latter  case  her  property  became  absolutely  his.  The 
natural  tendency  to  escape  from  the  restrictions  of 
marital  manus  may  be  illustrated  by  a  case  such 
as  the  following :  a  woman  under  the  tutela  of  a 
guardian  wishes  to  marry ;  if  she  does  so,  and  passes 
under  the  manus  of  her  husband,  her  tutor  loses  all 
control  over  her  property,  which  may  probably  be  of 
great  importance  for  the  family  she  is  leaving ;  he 
therefore  naturally  objects  to  such  a  marriage,  and 
urges  that  she  should  be  married  without  manus.1 
In  fact  the  interests  of  her  own  family  would  often 
clash  with  those  of  the  one  she  was  about  to  enter, 
and  a  compromise  could  be  effected  by  the  abandon¬ 
ment  of  marriage  cum  manu. 

Now  this,  the  abandonment  of  marriage  cum 
manu ,  means  simply  that  certain  legal  consequences 
of  the  marriage  ceremony  were  dropped,  and  with 
them  just  those  parts  of  the  ceremony  which  pro¬ 
duced  these  consequences.  Otherwise  the  marriage 
was  absolutely  as  valid  for  all  purposes  private  and 
public  as  it  could  be  made  even  by  confarreatio  itself. 
The  sacramental  part  was  absent,  and  the  survival  of 
the  features  of  marriage  by  purchase,  which  we  may 

1  This  is  how  I  understand  Cuq,  Institutions  juridiques  des  Eomains, 
p.  223.  In  the  well  known  Laudatio  Turiae  we  have  a  curious  case  of  a 
re-marriage  by  coemptio  with  manus,  for  a  particular  purpose,  connected  of 
course  with  money  matters.  See  Mommsen’s  Commentary,  reprinted  in  his 
Gesammelte  Schriften,  voL  i. 


140 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


see  in  the  form  of  coemptio,  was  also  absent ;  but  in 
all  other  respects  the  marriage  ceremony  was  the 
same  as  in  marriage  cum  manu.  It  retained  all 
essential  religious  features,  losing  only  a  part  of  its 
legal  character.  It  will  be  as  well  briefly  to  describe 
a  Roman  wedding  of  the  type  common  in  the  last 
two  centuries  of  the  Republic. 

To  begin  with,  the  boy  and  girl — for  such  they 
were,  as  we  should  look  on  them,  even  at  the  time  of 
marriage— have  been  betrothed,  in  all  probability, 
long  before.  Cicero  tells  us  that  he  betrothed  his 
daughter  Tullia  to  Calpurnius  Piso  Frugi  early  in  66 
b.c.  ;  the  marriage  took  place  in  63.  Tullia  seems  to 
have  been  born  in  76,  so  that  she  was  ten  years  old 
at  the  time  of  betrothal  and  thirteen  at  that  of 
marriage.  This  is  probably  typical  of  what  usually 
happened ;  and  it  shows  that  the  matter  was  really 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  parents.  It  was  a 
family  arrangement,  a  mariage  de  convenance ,  as  has 
been  and  is  the  practice  among  many  peoples,  ancient 
and  modern.1  The  betrothal  was  indeed  a  promise 
rather  than  a  definite  contract,  and  might  be  broken 
off  without  illegality ;  and  thus  if  there  were  a 
strong  dislike  on  the  part  of  either  girl  or  boy  a  way 
of  escape  could  be  found.2  However  this  may  be,  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  idea  of  the  marriage  was  not 
that  of  a  union  for  love,  though  it  was  distinguished 

1  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  ch.  x. 

2  See,  however,  the  curious  passage  quoted  by  Gellius  (iv.  4.  2)  from  Serv. 
Sulpicius,  the  great  jurist  (above,  p.  118  foil.),  on  sponsalia  in  Latium  down 
to  89  b.c. 


MARRIAGE 


141 

from  concubinage  by  an  “  affeetio  maritalis  ”  as  well  as 
by  legal  forms,  and  though  a  true  attachment  might, 
and  often  did,  as  in  modern  times  in  like  circum¬ 
stances,  arise  out  of  it.  It  was  the  idea  of  the 
service  of  the  family  and  the  State  that  lay  at  the 
root  of  the  union.  This  is  well  illustrated,  like  so 
many  other  Roman  ideas,  in  the  Aeneid  of  Virgil. 
Those  who  persist  in  looking  on  Aeneas  with  modern 
eyes,  and  convict  him  of  perfidy  towards  Dido,  forget 
that  his  passion  for  Dido  was  a  sudden  one,  not 
sanctioned  by  the  gods  or  by  favourable  auspices, 
and  that  the  ultimate  union  with  Lavinia,  for  whom 
he  forms  no  such  attachment,  was  one  which  would 
recommend  itself  to  every  Roman  as  justified  by  the 
advantage  to  the  State.  The  poet,  it  is  true,  betrays 
his  own  intense  humanity  in  his  treatment  of  the 
fate  of  Dido,  but  he  does  so  in  spite  of  his  theme, — 
the  duty  of  every  Roman  to  his  family  and  the  State. 
A  Roman  would  no  doubt  fall  in  love,  like  a  youth 
of  any  other  nation,  but  his  passion  had  nothing  to 
do  with  his  life  of  duty  as  a  Roman.  This  idea  of 
marriage  had  serious  consequences,  to  which  we  shall 
return  later  on. 

When  the  day  for  the  wedding  arrives,  our  bride 
assumes  her  bridal  dress,  laying  aside  the  toga 
praetexta  of  her  childhood  and  dedicating  her  dolls 
to  the  Lar  of  her  family ;  and  wearing  the  reddish 
veil  ( jlammeum )  and  the  woollen  girdle  fastened 
with  a  knot  called  the  knot  of  Hercules,1  she  awaits 

1  For  the  other  details  of  the  dress,  see  Marq.  Privatleben,  p.  43. 


142 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  arrival  of  the  bridegroom  in  her  father’s  house. 
Meanwhile  the  auspices  are  being  taken ; 1  in  earlier 
times  this  was  done  by  observing  the  flight  of  birds, 
but  now  by  examination  of  the  entrails  of  a  victim, 
apparently  a  sheep.  If  this  is  satisfactory  the 
youthful  pair  declare  their  consent  to  the  union  and 
join  their  right  hands  as  directed  by  a  pronuba,  i.e. 
a  married  woman,  who  acts  as  a  kind  of  priestess. 
Then  after  another  sacrifice  and  a  wedding  feast,  the 
bride  is  conducted  from  her  old  home  to  that  of  her 
husband,  accompanied  by  three  boys,  sons  of  living 
parents,  one  carrying  a  torch  while  the  other  two 
lead  her  by  either  hand  ;  flute-players  go  before,  and 
nuts  are  thrown  to  the  boys.  This  deductio ,  charm¬ 
ingly  described  in  the  beautiful  sixty-fifth  poem  of 
Catullus,  is  full  of  interesting  detail  which  must  be 
omitted  here.  When  the  bridegroom’s  house  is  reached, 
the  bride  smears  the  doorposts  with  fat  and  oil  and 
ties  a  woollen  fillet  round  each  :  she  is  then  lifted 
over  the  threshold,  is  taken  by  her  husband  into 
the  partnership  of  fire  and  water — the  essentials  of 
domestic  life — and  passes  into  the  atrium.  The 
morrow  will  find  her  a  materfamilias,  sitting  among 
her  maids  in  that  atrium,  or  in  the  more  private 
apartments  behind  it  : 

Claudite  ostia,  virgines 
Lusimus  satis.  At  boni 
Coniuges,  bene  vivite,  et 
Munere  assiduo  valentem 
Exercete  iuventam. 


1  Cic.  de  Div.  i.  16.  28. 


V 


MARRIAGE 


J43 


Even  the  dissipated  Catullus  eould  not  but  treat 
the  subject  of  marriage  with  dignity  and  tenderness, 
and  in  this  last  stanza  of  his  poem  he  alludes  to  the 
duties  of  a  married  pair  in  language  which  would 
have  satisfied  the  strictest  Roman.  He  has  also 
touched  another  chord  which  would  echo  in  the  heart 
of  every  good  citizen,  in  the  delicious  lines  which 
just  precede  those  quoted,  and  anticipate  the  child— 
a  son  of  course — that  is  to  be  born,  and  that  will 
lie  in  his  mother’s  arms  holding  out  his  little  hands, 
and  smiling  on  his  father.1  Nothing  can  better 
illustrate  the  contrast  in  the  mind  of  the  Roman 
between  passionate  love  and  serious  marriage  than 
a  comparison  of  this  lovely  poem  with  those  which 
tell  the  sordid  tale  of  the  poet’s  intrigues  with  Lesbia 
(Clodia).  The  beauty  and  gravitas  of  married  life  as 
it  used  to  be  are  still  felt  and  still  found,  but  the 
depths  of  human  feeling  are  not  stirred  by  them. 
Love  lies  beyond,  is  a  fact  outside  the  pale  of  the 
ordered  life  of  the  family  or  the  State. 

No  one  who  studies  this  ceremonial  of  Roman 
marriage,  in  the  light  of  the  ideas  which  it  indicates 
and  reflects,  can  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the 
position  of  the  married  woman  must  have  been  one 
of  substantial  dignity,  calling  for  and  calling  out 
a  corresponding  type  of  character.  Beyond  doubt 
the  position  of  the  Roman  materfamilias  was  a  much 
more  dignified  one  than  that  of  the  Greek  wife.  She 

1  These  lines  suggested  to  Virgil  the  famous  four  at  the  end  of  the  fourth 
Eclogue.  See  Virgil’s  “  Messianic  Eclogue,"  p.  72. 


144 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAF. 


was  far  indeed  from  being  a  mere  drudge  or  squaw ; 
she  shared  with  her  husband  in  all  the  duties  of  the 
household,  including  those  of  religion,  and  within 
the  house  itself  she  was  practically  supreme.1  She 
lived  in  the  atrium,  and  was  not  shut  away  in  a 
women’s  chamber ;  she  nursed  her  own  children  and 
brought  them  up  ;  she  had  entire  control  of  the  female 
slaves  who  were  her  maids  ;  she  took  her  meals  with 
her  husband,  but  sitting,  not  reclining,  and  abstaining 
from  wine  ;  in  all  practical  matters  she  was  consulted, 
and  only  on  questions  political  or  intellectual  was 
she  expected  to  be  silent.  When  she  went  out 
arrayed  in  the  graceful  stola  matronalis,  she  was 
treated  with  respect,  and  the  passers-by  made  way 
for  her ;  but  it  is  characteristic  of  her  position  that 
she  did  not  as  a  rule  leave  the  house  without  the 
knowledge  of  her  husband,  or  without  an  escort.2 

In  keeping  with  this  dignified  position  was  the 
ideal  character  of  the  materfamilias.  Ideal  we  must 
call  it,  for  it  does  not  in  all  respects  coincide  with 
the  tradition  of  Roman  women  even  in  early  times ; 
but  we  must  remember  that  at  all  periods  of  Roman 
history  the  woman  whose  memory  survives  is  apt 
to  be  the  woman  who  is  not  the  ideal  matron,  but 
one  who  forces  herself  into  notice  by  violating  the 

1  She  was  addressed  as  domina  by  all  members  of  the  family.  See 
Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  57  note  3.  It  should  be  noted  that  she  had  brought 
a  contribution  to  the  family  resources  in  the  form  of  a  dowry  (dos),  given  her 
by  her  father  to  maintain  her  position. 

2  These  details  are  drawn  chiefly  from  the  sixth  book  of  Valerius 
Maximus,  de  Pudicitia. 


V 


MARRIAGE 


i45 


traditions  of  womanhood.  The  typical  matron  would 
assuredly  never  dream  of  playing  a  part  in  history ; 
her  influence  was  behind  the  scenes,  and  therefore 
proportionally  powerful.  The  legendary  mother  of 
Coriolanus  (the  Yolumnia  of  Shakespeare),  Cornelia 
the  mother  of  the  Gracchi,  Aurelia,  Caesar’s  mother, 
and  Julia  his  daughter,  did  indirectly  play  a  far 
greater  part  in  public  life  than  the  loud  and  vicious 
ladies  who  have  left  behind  them  names  famous  or 
infamous ;  but  they  never  claimed  the  recognition  of 
their  power. 

This  peculiar  character  of  the  Roman  matron, 
a  combination  of  dignity,  industry,  and  practical 
wisdom,  was  exactly  suited  to  attract  the  attention 
of  a  gentle  philosopher  like  Plutarch,  who  loved,  with 
genuine  moral  fervour,  all  that  was  noble  and  honest 
in  human  nature.  Not  only  does  he  constantly  refer 
to  the  Roman  ladies  and  their  character  in  his  Lives 
and  his  Morals ,  but  in  his  series  of  more  than  a 
hundred  “  Roman  questions  ”  the  first  nine,  as  well  as 
many  others,  are  concerned  with  marriage  and  the 
household  life ;  and  in  his  treatise  called  Coniugalia 
praecepta  he  reflects  many  of  the  features  of  the 
Roman  matron.  From  him,  in  Sir  Thomas  North’s 
translation,  Shakespeare  drew  the  inspiration  which 
enabled  him  to  produce  on  the  Elizabethan  stage  at 
least  one  such  typical  matron.  In  Coriolanus  he  has 
followed  Plutarch  so  closely  that  the  reader  may 
almost  be  referred  to  him  as  an  authority  ;  and  in 
the  contrast  between  the  austere  and  dignified 


146 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAT. 


Volumnia  and  the  passionate  and  voluptuous  Cleo¬ 
patra  of  the  later  play,  the  poet’s  imagination  seems 
to  have  been  guided  by  a  true  historical  instinct. 

We  need  not  doubt  that  the  austere  matron  of  the 
old  type  survived  into  the  age  we  are  specially  con¬ 
cerned  with  ;  but  we  hardly  come  across  her  in  the 
literature  of  the  time,  just  because  she  was  living  her 
own  useful  life,  and  did  not  seek  publicity.  Chance 
has  indeed  preserved  for  us  on  stone  the  story  of  a 
wonderful  lady,  whose  early  years  of  married  life 
were  spent  in  the  trying  time  of  the  civil  wrars  of 
49-43  B.c.,  and  who,  if  a  devoted  husband’s  praises  are 
to  be  trusted,  as  indeed  they  may  be,  was  a  woman 
of  the  finest  Roman  cast,  and  endowed  with  such  a 
combination  of  practical  virtues  as  we  should  hardly 
have  expected  even  in  a  Roman  matron.  But  we 
shall  return  to  this  inscription  later  on. 

The  ladies  whom  we  meet  with  in  Cicero’s  letters 
and  in  the  other  literature  of  the  last  age  of  the 
Republic  are  not  of  this  type.  Since  the  second 
Punic  war  the  Roman  lady  has  changed,  like  every¬ 
thing  else  Roman.  It  is  not  possible  here  to  trace 
the  history  of  the  change  in  detail,  but  we  may  note 
that  it  seems  to  have  begun  within  the  household,  in 
matters  of  dress  and  expense,  and  later  on  affected 
the  life  and  bearing  of  women  in  society  and  politics. 
Marriages  cum  manu  became  unusual :  the  wife 
remained  in  the  potestas  of  her  father,  who  in  most 
cases,  doubtless,  ceased  to  trouble  himself  about  her, 
and  as  her  property  did  not  pass  to  her  husband,  she 


V 


MARRIAGE 


M  7 


could  not  but  obtain  a  new  position  of  independence. 
Women  began  to  be  rich,  and  in  the  year  169  b.c. 
a  law  was  passed  (lex  Voconia)  forbidding  women  of 
the  highest  census1  (who  alone  would  probably  be 
concerned)  to  inherit  legacies.  Even  before  the  end 
of  the  great  war,  and  when  private  luxury  would 
seem  out  of  place,  it  had  been  proposed  to  abolish 
the  Oppian  law,  which  placed  restrictions  on  the 
ornaments  and  apparel  of  women ;  and  in  spite  of 
the  vehement  opposition  of  Cato,  then  a  young  man, 
the  proposal  was  successful.2  At  the  same  time 
divorce,  which  had  probably  never  been  impossible 
though  it  must  have  been  rare,3  began  to  be  a 
common  practice.  We  find  to  our  surprise  that  the 
virtuous  Aemilius  Paullus,  in  other  respects  a  model 
paterfamilias,  put  away  his  wife,  and  when  asked 
why  he  did  so,  replied  that  a  woman  might  be 
excellent  in  the  eyes  of  her  neighbours,  but  that  only 
a  husband  could  tell  where  the  shoe  pinched.4  And 
in  estimating  the  changed  position  of  women  within 
the  family  we  must  not  forget  the  fact  that  in  the 
course  of  the  long  and  unceasing  wars  of  the  second 
century  B.c.,  husbands  were  away  from  home  for 


1  This  is  proved  by  an  allusion  to  Cato’s  speech  in  support  of  the  law,  in 
Gellius,  Nod.  Att.  vi.  13. 

2  Livy  xxxiv.  1  foil.,  where  the  speech  of  Cato  is  reproduced  in  Livy’s 
language  and  with  “modern”  rhetoric. 

3  De  Marchi,  op.  tit.  p.  163  ;  Marq.  Priuatleben ,  p.  87  foil.  Confarreatio 
was  only  dissoluble  by  diffarreatio,  but  this  was  perhaps  used  only  for  penal 
purposes.  Other  forms  of  marriage  did  not  present  the  same  difficulty,  not 
being  of  a  sacramental  character. 

4  Plutarch,  Aem.  Pauli.  5. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


I48 

years  together,  and  in  innumerable  cases  must  have 
perished  by  the  sword  or  pestilence,  or  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  an  enemy  and  been  enslaved.  It  was 
inevitable  that  as  the  male  population  diminished,  as 
it  undoubtedly  did  in  that  century,  the  importance 
of  woman  should  proportionately  have  increased. 
Unfortunately  too,  even  when  the  husbands  were  at 
home,  their  wives  sometimes  seem  to  have  wished 
to  be  rid  of  them.  In  180  B.c.  the  consul  Piso  was 
believed  to  have  been  murdered  by  his  wife,  and 
whether  the  story  be  true  or  not,  the  suspicion  is  at 
least  significant.1  In  154  two  noble  ladies,  wives  of 
consulares,  were  accused  of  poisoning  their  husbands 
and  put  to  death  by  a  council  of  their  own  relations.2 
Though  the  evidence  in  these  cases  is  not  by  any 
means  satisfactory,  yet  we  can  hardly  doubt  that 
there  was  a  tendency  among  women  of  the  highest 
rank  to  give  way  to  passion  and  excitement ;  the 
evidence  for  the  Bacchanalian  conspiracy  of  186  B.C., 
in  which  women  played  a  very  prominent  part,  is 
explicit,  and  shows  that  there  was  a  “new  woman” 
even  then,  who  had  ceased  to  be  satisfied  with 
the  austere  life  of  the  family  and  with  the  mental 
comfort  supplied  by  the  old  religion,  and  was  ready 
to  break  out  into  recklessness  even  in  matters  which 
were  the  concern  of  the  State.3  That  they  had 
already  begun  to  exercise  an  undue  influence  over 
their  husbands  in  public  affairs  seems  suggested  by 
old  Cato’s  famous  dictum  that  “  all  men  rule  over 

1  Livy  xl.  37.  a  Livy,  Epit.  48.  3  Livy  xxxix.  8-18. 


MARRIAGE 


V 


149 


women,  we  Romans  rule  over  all  men,  and  our 
wives  rule  over  us.”1 

But  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that 
the  men  themselves  were  not  equally  to  blame. 
Wives  do  not  poison  their  husbands  without  some 
reason  for  hating  them,  and  the  reason  is  not  difficult 
to  guess.  It  is  a  fact  beyond  doubt  that  in  spite  of 
the  charm  of  family  life  as  it  has  been  described 
above,  neither  law  nor  custom  exacted  conjugal 
faithfulness  from  a  husband.2  Old  Cato  represents 
fairly  well  the  old  idea  of  Roman  virtue,  yet  it  is 
clear  enough,  both  from  Plutarch’s  Life  of  him  (e.g. 
ch.  xxiv.)  and  from  fragments  of  his  own  writings, 
that  his  view  of  the  conjugal  relation  was  a  coarse  one, 
— that  he  looked  on  the  wife  rather  as  a  necessary 
agent  for  providing  the  State  with  children  than  as 
a  helpmeet  to  be  tended  and  revered.  And  this 
being  so,  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  that  men 
are  already  beginning  to  dislike  and  avoid  marriage ; 
a  most  dangerous  symptom,  with  which  a  century 
later  Augustus  found  it  impossible  to  cope.  In  the 
year  131,  just  after  Tiberius  Gracchus  had  been 
trying  to  revive  the  population  of  Italy  by  his 
agrarian  law,  Metellus  Macedonicus  the  censor  did 

1  Plutarch,  Cato  the  Elder  8. 

2  Gellius  (x.  23)  quotes  a  fragment  of  Cato’s  speech  de  Dotibus,  in 
which  the  following  sentences  occur:  “Si  quid  perverse  taetreque  factum 
est  a  muliere,  multitatur :  si  vinum  bibit,  si  cum  alieno  viro  probri  quid 
fecerit,  condempnatur.  In  adulterio  uxorem  tuam  si  prehendisses  sine 
iudicio  impune  necares :  ilia  te,  si  adulterares  sive  tu  adulterarere,  digito 
non  auderet  contingere,  neque  ius  est.”  Under  such  circumstances  a  bold 
woman  might  take  her  revenge  illegally. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


150 

what  he  could  to  induce  men  to  marry  “  liberorum 
creandorum  causa  ”  ;  and  a  fragment  of  a  speech  of 
his  on  this  subject  became  famous  afterwards,  as 
quoted  by  Augustus  with  the  same  object.  It  is 
equally  characteristic  of  Roman  humour  and  Roman 
hardness.  “  If  we  could  do  without  wives,”  he  said 
to  the  people,  “  we  should  be  rid  of  that  nuisance : 
but  since  nature  has  decreed  that  we  can  neither  live 
comfortably  with  them  nor  live  at  all  without  them, 
we  must  e’en  look  rather  to  our  permanent  interests 
than  to  a  passing  pleasure.”  1 

Now  if  we  take  into  account  these  tendencies,  on 
the  part  both  of  men  and  women  in  the  married 
state,  and  further  consider  the  stormy  and  revolu¬ 
tionary  character  of  the  half  century  that  succeeded 
the  Gracchi, — the  Social  and  Civil  Wars,  the  proscrip¬ 
tions  of  Marius  and  Sulla, — we  shall  be  prepared  to 
find  the  ladies  of  Cicero’s  time  by  no  means  simply 
feminine  in  charm  or  homely  in  disposition.  Most 
of  them  are  indeed  mere  names  to  us,  and  we  have 
to  be  careful  in  weighing  what  is  said  of  them  by 
later  writers.  But  of  two  or  three  of  them  we  do  in 
fact  know  a  good  deal. 

The  one  of  whom  we  really  know  most  is  the  wife 
of  Cicero,  Terentia  :  an  ordinary  lady,  of  no  particular 
ability  or  interest,  who  may  stand  as  representative 
of  the  quieter  type  of  married  woman.  She  lived 
with  her  husband  about  thirty  years,  and  until 
towards  the  end  of  that  period,  a  long  one  for  the  age, 

1  Gellius  i.  6 ;  cp.  Livy,  Epit.  59. 


V 


MARRIAGE 


151 

we  find  nothing  substantial  against  her.  If  we  had 
nothing  but  Cicero’s  letters  to  her,  more  than  twenty 
in  number,  and  his  allusions  to  her  in  other  letters,  we 
should  conclude  that  she  was  a  faithful  and  on  the 
whole  a  sensible  wife.  But  more  than  once  he  writes 
of  her  delicate  health,1  and  as  the  poor  lady  had  at 
various  times  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  go  through, 
it  is  quite  possible  that  as  she  grew  older  she  became 
short  in  her  temper,  or  trying  in  other  ways  to  a 
husband  so  excitable  and  vacillating.  We  find  stories 
of  her  in  Plutarch  and  elsewhere  which  represent  her 
as  shrewish,  too  careful  of  her  own  money,  and  so 
on ; 2  but  facts  are  of  more  account  than  the  gossip  of 
the  day,  and  there  is  not  a  sign  in  the  letters  that 
Cicero  disliked  or  mistrusted  her  until  the  year  47. 
Had  there  really  been  cause  for  mistrust  it  would 
have  slipped  out  in  some  letter  to  Atticus.  Then, 
after  his  absence  during  the  war,  he  seems  to  have 
believed  that  she  had  neglected  himself  and  his 
interests:  his  letters  to  her  grow  colder  and  colder, 
and  the  last  is  one  which,  as  has  been  truly  said,  a 
gentleman  would  not  write  to  his  housekeeper.  The 
pity  of  it  is  that  Cicero,  after  divorcing  her,  married 
a  young  and  rich  wife,  aud  does  not  seem  to  have 
behaved  very  well  to  her.  In  a  letter  to  Atticus 

1  e.g.  ad  Fam.  xiv.  2. 

2  The  story  of  the  relations  of  Cicero,  Terentia,  Clodius,  and  Clodia,  in 
Plut.  Cic.  29  is  too  full  of  inaccuracies  to  be  depended  on.  In  the  41st 
chapter  what  he  says  of  the  divorce  and  its  causes  must  be  received  with 
caution  ;  it  seems  to  come  from  some  record  left  by  Tiro,  Cicero’s  freedman 
and  devoted  friend,  and  as  Cicero  obviously  loved  this  man  much  more  than 
his  wife,  we  can  understand  why  the  two  should  dislike  each  other. 


152 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


(xii.  32)  he  writes  that  Publilia  wanted  to  come 
to  him  with  her  mother,  when  he  was  at  Astura, 
devoting  himself  to  grief  for  his  daughter,  and  that 
he  had  answered  that  he  wished  to  be  let  alone.  The 
letter  shows  Cicero  at  his  worst,  for  once  heartless 
and  discourteous ;  and  if  he  could  be  so  to  a  young 
lady  who  wished  to  do  her  duty  by  him,  what  may 
he  not  have  been  to  Terentia  ?  I  suspect  that 
Terentia  was  quite  as  much  sinned  against  as  sinning  ; 
and  may  we  not  believe  that  of  the  innumerable 
married  women  who  were  divorced  at  this  time  some 
at  least  were  the  victims  of  their  husbands’  callous¬ 
ness  rather  than  of  their  own  shortcomings  ? 

The  wife  of  Cicero’s  brother  Quintus  does,  however, 
seem  to  have  been  a  difficult  person  to  get  on  with. 
She  was  a  sister  of  Atticus,  but  she  did  not  share  her 
brother’s  tact  and  universal  good-will.  Marcus  Cicero 
has  recorded  (ad  Att.  v.  1)  a  scene  in  which  her  ill- 
temper  was  so  ludicrous  that  the  divorce  which  took 
place  afterwards  needs  no  explanation.  The  two 
brothers  were  travelling  together,  and  Pomponia  was 
with  them  ;  something  had  irritated  her.  When  they 
stopped  to  lunch  at  a  place  belonging  to  Quintus  at 
Arcanum,  he  asked  his  wife  to  invite  the  ladies  of  the 
party  in.  “  Nothing,  as  I  thought,  could  be  more  cour¬ 
teous,  and  that  too  not  only  in  the  actual  words,  but 
in  his  intention  and  the  expression  of  his  face.  But 
she,  in  the  hearing  of  us  all,  exclaimed,  ‘  I  am  only  a 
stranger  here  !  ’  ”  Apparently  she  had  not  been  asked 
by  her  husband  to  see  after  the  luncheon ;  this  had 


MARRIAGE 


153 


been  done  by  a  freedman,  and  she  was  annoyed. 
“  There,”  said  Quintus,  “  that  is  what  I  have  to  put  up 
with  every  day  !  ”  When  he  sent  her  dishes  from  the 
triclinium,  where  the  gentlemen  were  having  their 
meal,  she  would  not  taste  them.  This  little  domestic 
contretemps  is  too  good  to  be  neglected,  but  we 
must  turn  to  women  of  greater  note  and  character. 

Terentia  and  Pomponia  and  their  kind  seem  to 
have  had  nothing  in  the  way  of  “  higher  education,” 
nor  do  their  husbands  seem  to  have  expected  from  them 
any  desire  to  share  in  their  own  intellectual  interests. 
Not  once  does  Cicero  allude  to  any  pleasant  social 
intercourse  in  which  his  wife  took  part ;  and,  to  say 
the  truth,  he  would  probably  have  avoided  marriage 
with  a  woman  of  taste  and  knowledge.  There  were 
such  women,  as  we  shall  see,  probably  many  of 
them ;  ever  since  the  incoming  of  wealth  and  of 
Greek  education,  of  theatres  and  amusements  and  all 
the  pleasant  out-of-door  life  of  the  city,  what  was 
now  coming  to  be  called  cultus  had  occupied  the 
minds  and  affected  the  habits  of  Roman  ladies  as  well 
as  men.  Unfortunately  it  was  seldom  that  it  was 
found  compatible  with  the  old  Roman  ideal  of  the 
materfamilias  and  her  duties.  The  invasion  of  new 
manners  was  too  sudden,  as  was  the  corresponding 
invasion  of  wealth ;  such  a  lady  as  Cornelia,  the 
famous  mother  of  the  Gracchi,  who  knew  what 
education  really  meant,  who  had  learned  men  about 
her  and  could  write  well  herself,  and  yet  could 
combine  with  these  qualities  the  careful  discharge  of 


154 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  duties  of  wife  and  mother,1 — such  ladies  must 
have  been  rare,  and  in  Cicero’s  time  hardly  to  be 
found.  More  and  more  the  notion  gained  ground 
that  a  clever  woman  who  wished  to  make  a  figure  in 
society,  to  be  the  centre  of  her  own  moncle,  could  not 
well  realise  her  ambition  simply  as  a  married  woman. 
She  would  probably  marry,  play  fast  and  loose  with 
the  married  state,  neglect  her  children  if  she  had  any, 
and  after  one  or  two  divorces,  die  or  disappear.  So 
powerfully  did  this  idea  of  the  incompatibility  of 
culture  and  wifehood  gain  possession  of  the  Roman 
mind  in  the  last  century  b.c.,  that  Augustus  found 
his  struggle  with  it  the  most  difficult  task  he  had  to 
face ;  in  vain  he  exiled  Ovid  for  publishing  a  work  in 
which  married  women  are  most  frankly  and  explicitly 
left  out  of  account,  while  all  that  is  attractive  in  the 
other  sex  to  a  man  of  taste  and  education  is  assumed 
to  be  found  only  among  those  who  have,  so  far  at 
least,  eschewed  the  duties  and  burdens  of  married 
life.  The  culta  puella  and  the  cultus  puer  of  Ovid’s 
fascinating  yet  repulsive  poem  2  are  the  products  of  a 
society  which  looks  on  pleasure,  not  reason  or  duty, 
as  the  main  end  of  life, — not  indeed  pleasure  simply 
of  the  grosser  type,  but  the  gratification  of  one’s 
own  wish  for  enjoyment  and  excitement,  without  a 
thought  of  the  misery  all  around,  or  any  sense  of  the 
self-respect  that  comes  of  active  well-doing. 

1  Plutarch,  Ti.  Gracch.  1  ;  Gains  Gracch.  19.  The  letters  of  Cornelia 
which  are  extant  are  quite  possibly  genuine. 

2  The  recent  edition  of  the  Ars  amatoria  by  Paul  Brandt  has  an  intro¬ 
duction  in  which  these  points  are  well  expressed 


V 


MARRIAGE 


155 


The  most  notable  example  of  a  woman  of  cultus 
in  Cicero’s  clay  was  the  famous  Clodia,  the  Lesbia  (as 
we  may  now  almost  assume)  who  fascinated  Catullus 
and  then  threw  him  over.  She  had  been  married  to 
a  man  of  family  and  high  station,  Metellus  Celer,  who 
had  died,  strange  to  say,  without  divorcing  her.  She 
must  have  been  a  woman  of  great  beauty  and  charm, 
for  she  seems  to  have  attracted  round  her  a  little 
coterie  of  clever  young  men  and  poets,  to  whom  she 
could  lend  money  or  accord  praise  as  suited  the 
moment.  Whether  Cicero  himself  had  once  come 
within  reach  of  her  attractions,  and  perhaps  suffered 
by  them,  is  an  open  question,  and  depends  chiefly  on 
statements  of  Plutarch  which  may  (as  has  been  said 
above)  have  no  better  foundation  than  the  gossip  of 
society.  But  we  know  how  two  typical  young  men 
of  the  time,  Caelius  and  Catullus,  flew  into  the  candle 
and  were  singed ;  we  know  how  fiercely  she  turned 
on  Caelius,  exposing  herself  and  him  without  a 
moment’s  hesitation  in  a  public  court ;  and  we  know 
how  cruelly  she  treated  the  poet,  who  hated  her  for  it 
even  while  he  still  loved  her  : 1 

Odi  et  amo.  Quare  id  faciam,  fortasse  requiris ; 

Nescio,  sed  fieri  sentio  et  excrucior. 

Catull.  85. 

She  was,  as  M.  Boissier  has  well  said,2  the  exact 
counterpart  of  her  still  more  famous  brother  :  “  Elle 
apportait  dans  sa  conduite  privee,  dans  ses  engage¬ 
ments  d’affection,  les  memes  emportements  et  les 

1  Catullus  72.  75.  3  Cicirorn  et  ses  amis,  p.  175. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


156 

memes  ardeurs  que  son  frere  dans  la  vie  publique. 
Prompte  a  tous  les  exces  et  ne  rougissant  pas  de  les 
avouer,  aimant  et  haissant  avec  fureur,  incapable  de 
se  gouverner  et  detestant  toute  contrainte,  elle  ne 
d^mentait  pas  cette  grande  et  here  famille  dont  elle 
descendait.”  All  this  is  true  ;  we  need  not  go  beyond 
it  and  believe  the  worst  that  has  been  said  of  her. 

We  have  just  a  glimpse  of  another  lady  of  cultus, 
but  only  a  glimpse.  This  was  Sempronia,  the  wife 
of  an  honest  man  and  the  mother  of  another ; 1  but 
according  to  Sallust,  who  introduces  her  to  us  as 
a  principal  in  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline,  she  was 
one  of  those  who  found  steady  married  life  incom¬ 
patible  with  literary  and  artistic  tastes.  “  She  could 
play  and  dance  more  elegantly  than  an  honest  woman 
should  .  .  .  she  played  fast  and  loose  with  her  money, 
and  equally  so  with  her  good  fame.”2  She  had  no 
scruples,  he  says,  in  denying  a  debt,  or  in  helping  in 
a  murder  :  yet  she  had  plenty  of  esprit,  could  write 
verses  and  talk  brilliantly,  and  she  knew  too  how  to 
assume  an  air  of  modesty  on  occasion.  Sallust  loved 
to  colour  his  portraits  highly,  and  in  painting  this 
woman  he  saw  no  doubt  a  chance  of  literary  effect ; 
but  that  she  was  really  in  the  conspiracy  we  cannot 
doubt,  and  that  she  had  private  ends  to  gain  by  it 
is  also  probable.  She  seems  to  be  the  first  of  a  series 
of  ladies  who  during  the  next  century  and  later  were 
to  be  a  power  in  politics,  and  most  of  whom  were  at 


1  Decimus  Brutus,  one  of  the  tyrannicides  of  March  15,  44. 
3  Sail.  Cat.  25. 


T 


MARRIAGE 


i57 


least  capable  of  crime,  public  and  private.  There  is 
indeed  one  instance  a  few  years  earlier  of  a  woman 
exercising  an  almost  supreme  influence  in  the  State, 
and  a  woman  too  of  the  worst  kind.  Plutarch  tells 
us  in  the  most  explicit  way  that  when  Lucullus  in 
75  B.c.  was  trying  to  secure  for  himself  the  command 
against  Mithridates,  he  found  himself  compelled  to 
apply  to  a  woman  named  Praecia,  whose  social  gifts 
and  good  nature  gave  her  immense  influence,  which 
she  used  with  the  pertinacity  peculiar  to  such  ladies. 
Her  reputation,  however,  was  very  bad,  and  among 
other  lovers  she  had  enslaved  Cethegus  (afterwards 
the  conspirator),  whose  power  at  the  time  was  immense 
at  Rome.  Thus,  says  Plutarch,  the  whole  power  of 
the  State  fell  into  the  hands  of  Praecia,  for  no  public 
measure  was  passed  if  Cethegus  was  not  for  it,  in 
other  words,  if  Praecia  did  not  recommend  it  to  him. 
If  the  story  be  true,  as  it  seems  to  be,  Lucullus  gained 
her  over  by  gifts  and  flattery,  and  thus  Cethegus 
took  up  his  cause  and  got  him  the  command.1 

Even  if  we  put  aside  as  untrustworthy  a  great 
deal  of  what  is  told  us  of  the  relations  of  men  and 
women  in  this  period,  it  must  be  confessed  that  there 
is  quite  sufficient  evidence  to  show  that  they  were 
loose  in  the  extreme,  and  show  an  altogether  un¬ 
healthy  condition  of  family  and  social  life.  The 
famous  tigress  of  the  story  of  Cluentius,  Sassia,  as 
she  appears  in  Cicero’s  defence  of  him,  was  beyond 
doubt  a  criminal  of  the  worst  kind,  however  much 


1  Plut.  Lucullus  6. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


158 

we  may  discount  the  orator’s  rhetoric ;  and  her  case 
proves  that  the  evil  did  not  exist  only  at  Rome,  but 
was  to  be  found  even  in  a  provincial  town  of  no  great 
importance.  Divorce  was  so  common  as  to  be  almost 
inevitable.  Husbands  divorced  their  wives  on  the 
smallest  pretexts,  and  wives  divorced  their  husbands.1 
Even  the  virtuous  Cato  seems  to  have  divorced  his 
wife  Marcia  in  order  that  Hortensius  should  marry 
her,  and  after  some  years  to  have  married  her  again 
as  the  widow  of  Hortensius,  with  a  large  fortune.2 
Cicero  himself  writes  sometimes  in  the  lightest- 
hearted  way  of  conjugal  relations  which  we  should 
think  most  serious  ; 3  and  we  find  him  telling  Atticus 
how  he  had  met  at  dinner  the  actress  Cytheris,  a 
woman  of  notoriously  bad  character.  “  I  did  not 
know  she  was  going  to  be  there,”  he  says,  “  but  even 
the  Socratic  Aristippus  himself  did  not  blush  when 
he  was  taunted  about  Lais.”4  Caesar’s  reputation  in 
such  matters  was  at  all  times  bad,  and  though  many 
of  the  stories  about  him  are  manifestly  false,  his 
conquest  by  Cleopatra  was  a  fact,  and  we  learn  with 
regret  that  the  Egyptian  queen  was  living  in  a  villa 
of  his  in  gardens  beyond  the  Tiber  during  the  year 
46,  when  he  was  himself  in  Rome. 

It  will  be  a  relief  to  the  reader,  after  spending  so 

1  Cic.  ad  Fam.  viii.  7  :  a  letter  of  Caelius,  in  which  he  tells  of  a  lady 
who  divorced  her  husband  without  pretext  on  the  very  day  he  returned  from 
his  province. 

2  Plut.  Cato  min.  25  and  52.  Plutarch  seems  to  be  using  here  the  Anti- 
Cato  of  Caesar,  but  the  facts  must  have  been  well  known. 

3  e.g.  ad  Att.  xv.  29.  4  ad  Fam.  ix.  26. 


Y 


MARRIAGE 


159 


much  time  in  this  unwholesome  atmosphere,  to  turn 
for  a  moment  in  the  last  place  to  a  record,  unique 
and  entirely  credible,  of  a  truly  good  and  wholesome 
woman,  and  of  a  long  period  of  uninterrupted  conjugal 
devotion.  About  the  year  8  B.c.,  not  long  before  Ovid 
wrote  those  poems  in  which  married  life  was  assumed 
to  be  hardly  worth  living,  a  husband  in  high  life 
at  Rome  lost  the  wife  who  had  for  forty -one  years 
been  his  faithful  companion  in  prosperity,  his  wise 
and  courageous  counsellor  in  adversity.  He  recorded 
her  praises  and  the  story  of  her  devotion  to  him  in 
a  long  inscription,  placed,  as  we  may  suppose,  on  the 
wall  of  the  tomb  in  which  he  laid  her  to  rest,  and 
a  most  fortunate  chance  has  preserved  for  us  a  great 
part  of  the  marble  on  which  this  inscription  was 
engraved.  It  is  in  the  form  of  a  laudatio,  or  funeral 
encomium ;  yet  we  cannot  feel  sure  that  he  actually 
delivered  it  as  a  speech,  for  throughout  it  he  addresses, 
not  an  audience,  but  the  lost  wife  herself,  in  a  manner 
unique  among  such  documents  of  the  kind  as  have 
come  down  to  us.  He  speaks  to  her  as  though  she 
were  still  living,  though  passed  from  his  sight ;  and 
it  is  just  this  that  makes  it  more  real  and  more 
touching  than  any  memorial  of  the  dead  that  has 
come  down  to  us  from  either  Italy  or  Greece.1 

1  The  so-called  Laudatio  Turiae  is  well  known  to  all  students  of  Roman 
law,  as  raising  a  complicated  question  of  Roman  legal  inheritance  ;  but  it 
may  also  be  reckoned  as  a  real  fragment  of  Roman  literature,  valuable,  too, 
for  some  points  in  the  history  of  the  time  it  covers.  It  was  first  made 
accessible  and  intelligible  by  Mommsen  in  1863,  and  the  paper  he  then  wrote 
about  it  has  lately  been  reprinted  in  his  Gesammelte  Schriften,  vol.  i., 


i6o 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


In  such  a  record  names  are  of  no  great  importance ; 
it  is  no  great  misfortune  that  we  do  not  know  quite 
for  certain  who  this  man  and  his  wife  were.  But 
there  is  a  very  strong  probability  that  her  name  was 
Turia,  and  that  he  was  a  certain  Q.  Lucretius  Vespillo, 
who  served  under  Pompeius  in  Epirus  in  48  b.c., 
whose  romantic  adventures  in  the  proscriptions  of  43 
are  recorded  by  Appian,1  and  who  eventually  became 
consul  under  Augustus  in  19  B.c.  We  may  venture 
to  use  these  names  in  telling  the  remarkable  story. 
For  telling  it  here  no  apology  is  needed,  for  it  has 
never  been  told  in  English  as  a  whole,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware. 

It  begins  when  the  pair  were  about  to  be  married, 
probably  in  49  b.c.,  and  with  a  horrible  family 
calamity,  not  unnatural  at  the  moment  of  the  out¬ 
break  of  a  dangerous  civil  war.  Both  Turia’s  parents 
were  murdered  suddenly  and  together  at  their  country 
residence — perhaps,  as  Mommsen  suggested,  by  their 
own  slaves.  Immediately  afterwards  Lucretius  had 
to  leave  with  Pompeius’  army  for  Epirus,  and  Turia 
was  left  alone,  bereft  of  both  her  parents,  to  do  what 
she  could  to  secure  the  punishment  of  the  murderers. 
Alone  as  she  was,  or  aided  only  by  a  married  sister, 
she  at  once  showed  the  courage  and  energy  which  are 


together  with  a  new  fragment  discovered  on  the  same  site  as  the  others  in 
1898.  This  fragment,  and  a  discussion  of  its  relation  to  the  whole,  will  he 
found  in  the  Classical  Review  for  June  1905,  p.  261 ;  the  laudatio  without 
the  new  fragment  in  C.I.L.  vi.  1527. 

1  App.  B.  C.  iv.  44.  The  identification  has  been  impugned  of  late,  but,  as 
I  think,  without  due  reason.  See  my  article  in  Classical  Rev.,  1905,  p.  265. 


MARRIAGE 


161 


▼ 

obvious  in  all  we  hear  of  her.  She  seems  to  have 
succeeded  in  tracking  the  assassins  and  bringing 
them  to  justice  :  “  even  if  I  had  been  there  myself,” 
says  her  husband,  “  I  could  have  done  no  more.” 

But  this  was  by  no  means  the  only  dangerous 
task  she  had  to  undertake  in  those  years  of  civil  war 
and  insecurity.  When  Lucretius  left  her  they  seem 
to  have  been  staying  at  the  villa  where  her  parents 
had  been  murdered ;  she  had  given  him  all  her  gold 
and  pearls,  and  kept  him  supplied  in  his  absence 
with  money,  provisions,  and  even  slaves,  which  she 
contrived  to  smuggle  over  sea  to  Epirus.1  And  during 
the  march  of  Caesar’s  army  through  Italy  she  seems 
to  have  been  threatened,  either  in  that  villa  or  another, 
by  some  detachment  of  his  troops,  and  to  have 
escaped  only  through  her  own  courage  and  the 
clemency  of  one  whose  name  is  not  mentioned,  but 
who  can  hardly  be  other  than  the  great  Julius  him¬ 
self,  a  true  gentleman,  whose  instinct  and  policy 
alike  it  was  throughout  this  civil  war  to  be  merciful 
to  opponents. 

A  year  later,  while  Lucretius  was  still  away,  yet 
another  peril  came  upon  her.  While  Caesar  was 
operating  round  Dyrrhachium,  there  was  a  dangerous 
rising  in  Campania  and  Southern  Italy,  for  which  our 
giddy  friend  Caelius  Rufus  was  chiefly  responsible  ; 
gladiators  and  ruffianly  shepherd  slaves  were  enlisted, 
and  by  some  of  these  the  villa  where  she  was  staying 

1  This  is  how  I  interpret  the  new  fragment.  See  Classical  Rev.  l.c. 
p.  263  foil. 

M 


162 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


was  attacked,  and  successfully  defended  by  her, — so 
much  at  least  it  seems  possible  to  infer  from  the 
fragment  recently  discovered. 

One  might  think  that  Turia  had  already  had 
her  full  share  of  trouble  and  danger,  but  there  is 
much  more  to  come.  About  this  time  she  had  to 
defend  herself  against  another  attack,  not  indeed  on 
her  person,  but  on  her  rights  as  an  heiress.  An 
attempt  was  made  by  her  relations  to  upset  her 
father’s  will,  under  which  she  and  Lucretius  were 
appointed  equal  inheritors  of  his  property.  The 
result  of  this  would  have  been  to  make  her  the  sole 
heiress,  leaving  out  her  husband  and  her  married 
sister ;  but  she  would  have  been  under  the  legal 
tutela  or  guardianship  of  persons  whose  motive  in 
attacking  the  will  was  to  obtain  administration  of  the 
property.1  No  doubt  they  meant  to  administer  it 
for  their  own  advantage ;  and  it  was  absolutely 
necessary  that  she  should  resist  them.  How  she  did 
it  her  husband  does  not  tell  us,  but  he  says  that  the 
enemy  retreated  from  his  position,  yielding  to  her 
firmness  and  perseverance  (constantia).  The  patri- 
monium  came,  as  her  father  had  intended,  to  herself 
and  her  husband ;  and  he  dwells  on  the  care  with 
which  they  dealt  with  it,  he  exercising  a  tutela  over 
her  share,  while  she  exercised  a  custodia  over  his. 
Very  touchingly  he  adds,  “  but  of  this  I  leave  much 
unsaid,  lest  I  should  seem  to  be  claiming  a  share  in 
the  praise  that  is  due  to  you  alone.” 

1  For  the  legal  question  see  Mommsen,  Gesammelte  Schriften,  i.  p.  407  foil. 


V 


MARRIAGE 


163 

When  Lucretius  returned  to  Italy,  apparently 
pardoned  by  Caesar  for  the  part  he  had  taken  against 
him,  the  marriage  must  have  been  consummated. 
Then  came  the  murder  of  the  Dictator,  which 
plunged  Italy  once  more  into  civil  war,  until  in  43 
Antony  Octavian  and  Lepidus  made  their  famous 
compact,  and  at  once  proceeded  to  that  abominable 
work  of  proscription  which  made  a  reign  of  terror  at 
Rome,  and  spilt  much  of  the  best  Roman  blood.  The 
happiness  of  the  pair  was  suddenly  destroyed,  for 
Lucretius  found  himself  named  in  the  fatal  lists.1  He 
seems  to  have  been  in  the  country,  not  far  from  Rome, 
when  he  received  a  message  from  his  wife,  telling 
him  of  impending  peril  that  he  might  have  to  face 
at  any  moment,  and  warning  him  strongly  against 
a  certain  rash  course— perhaps  an  attempt  to  escape 
to  Sextus  Pompeius  in  Sicily,  a  course  which  cost 
the  lives  of  many  deluded  victims.  She  implored 
him  to  return  to  their  own  house  in  Rome,  where 
she  had  devised  a  secure  hiding-place  for  him.  She 
meant  no  doubt  to  die  with  him  there  if  he  were 
discovered. 

He  obeyed  his  good  genius  and  made  for  Rome, 
by  night  it  would  seem,  with  only  two  faithful  slaves. 
One  of  these  fell  lame  and  had  to  be  left  behind ; 
and  Lucretius,  leaning  on  the  arm  of  the  other, 
approached  the  city  gate.  Suddenly  they  became 

1  The  account  that  follows  is  put  together  from  Appian  iv.  44,  Valerius 
Maximus  vi.  7.  2,  and  the  Laudatio.  Appian  preserved  some  fifty  stories  of 
escapes  at  this  time,  and  the  only  one  that  fits  with  the  Laudatio  is  that  of 
Lucretius. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


I64 

aware  of  a  troop  of  soldiers  issuing  from  it,  and 
Lucretius  took  refuge  in  one  of  the  many  tombs 
that  lined  the  great  roads  outside  the  walls.  They 
had  not  been  long  in  this  dismal  hiding  when  they 
were  surprised  by  a  party  of  tomb-wreckers — ghouls 
who  haunted  these  roads  by  night  and  lived  by 
robbing  tombs  or  travellers.  Luckily  they  wanted 
rather  to  rob  than  to  murder,  and  the  slave  gave 
himself  up  to  them  to  be  stripped,  while  his  master, 
who  was  no  doubt  disguised,  perhaps  as  a  slave, 
contrived  to  slip  out  of  their  hands  and  reached  the 
city  gate  safely.  Here  he  waited,  as  we  might  expect 
him  to  do,  for  his  brave  companion,  and  then 
succeeded  in  making  his  way  into  the  city  and  to 
his  house,  where  his  wife  concealed  him  between  the 
roof  and  the  ceiling  of  one  of  their  bedrooms,  until 
the  storm  should  blow  over. 

But  neither  life  nor  property  was  safe  until  some 
pardon  and  restitution  were  obtained  from  one  at 
least  of  the  triumvirs.  When  at  last  these  were 
conceded  by  Octavian,  he  was  himself  absent  in  the 
campaign  that  ended  with  Philippi,  and  Lepidus  was 
consul  in  charge  of  Rome.  To  Lepidus  Turia  had 
to  go,  to  beg  the  confirmation  of  Octavian’s  grace, 
and  this  brutal  man  received  her  with  insult  and 
injury.  She  fell  at  his  feet,  as  her  husband  describes 
with  bitter  indignation,  but  instead  of  being  raised 
and  congratulated,  she  was  hustled,  beaten  like  a 
slave,  and  driven  from  his  presence.  But  her  per¬ 
severance  had  its  ultimate  reward.  The  clemency 


V 


MARRIAGE 


165 

of  Octavian  prevailed  on  his  return  to  Italy,  and  this 
treatment  of  a  lady  was  among  the  many  crimes  that 
called  for  the  eventual  degradation  of  Lepidus. 

This  was  the  last  of  their  perilous  escapes.  A 
long  period  of  happy  married  life  awaited  them,  more 
particularly  after  the  battle  of  Actium,  when  “  peace 
and  the  republic  were  restored.”  One  thing  only 
was  wanting  to  complete  their  perfect  felicity — they 
had  no  children.  It  was  this  that  caused  Turia  to 
make  a  proposal  to  her  husband  which,  coming  from 
a  truly  unselfish  woman,  and  seen  in  the  light  of 
Roman  ideas  of  married  life,  is  far  from  unnatural ; 
but  to  us  it  must  seem  astonishing,  and  it  filled 
Lucretius  with  horror.  She  urged  that  he  should 
divorce  her,  and  take  another  wife  in  the  hope  of  a 
son  and  heir.  If  there  is  nothing  very  surprising  in 
this  from  a  Roman  point  of  view,  it  is  indeed  to  us 
both  surprising  and  touching  that  she  should  have 
supported  her  request  by  a  promise  that  she  would 
be  as  much  a  mother  to  the  expected  children  as 
their  own  mother,  and  would  still  be  to  Lucretius 
a  sister,  having  nothing  apart  from  him,  nothing 
secret,  and  taking  away  with  her  no  part  of  their 
inheritance. 

To  us,  reading  this  proposal  in  cold  blood  just 
nineteen  hundred  years  after  it  was  made,  it  may 
seem  foolishly  impracticable ;  to  her,  whose  whole 
life  was  spent  in  unselfish  devotion  to  her  husband’s 
interests,  whose  warm  love  for  him  was  always 
mingled  with  discretion,  it  was  simply  an  act  of 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


1 66 

pietas — of  wifely  duty.  Yet  he  could  not  for  a 
moment  think  so  himself :  his  indignation  at  the  bare 
idea  of  it  lives  for  ever  on  the  marble  in  glowing 
words.  “  I  must  confess,”  he  says,  “  that  the  anger 
so  burnt  within  me  that  my  senses  almost  deserted 
me :  that  you  should  ever  have  thought  it  possible 
that  we  could  be  separated  but  by  death,  was  most 
horrible  to  me.  What  was  the  need  of  children 
compared  with  my  loyalty  to  you  :  why  should  I 
exchange  certain  happiness  for  an  uncertain  future  ? 
But  I  say  no  more  of  this  :  you  remained  with  me, 
for  I  could  not  yield  without  disgrace  to  myself  and 
unhappiness  to  both  of  us.  The  one  sorrow  that 
was  in  store  for  me  was  that  I  was  destined  to 
survive  you.” 

These  two,  we  may  feel  sure,  were  wholly  worthy 
of  each  other.  What  she  would  have  said  of  him,  if 
he  had  been  the  first  to  go,  we  can  only  guess ;  but 
he  has  left  a  portrait  of  her,  as  she  lived  and  worked 
in  his  household,  which,  mutilated  though  it  is,  may 
be  inadequately  paraphrased  as  follows  : 

“  You  were  a  faithful  wife  to  me,”  he  says,  “  and 
an  obedient  one  :  you  were  kind  and  gracious,  sociable 
and  friendly  :  you  were  assiduous  at  your  spinning 
(lanificia) :  you  followed  the  religious  rites  of  your 
family  and  your  state,  and  admitted  no  foreign  cults 
or  degraded  magic  (superstitio) :  you  did  not  dress 
conspicuously,  nor  seek  to  make  a  display  in  your 
household  arrangements.  Your  duty  to  our  whole 
household  was  exemplary :  you  tended  my  mother 


V 


MARRIAGE 


167 

as  carefully  as  if  she  had  been  your  own.  You  had 
innumerable  other  excellences,  in  common  with  all 
other  worthy  matrons,  but  these  I  have  mentioned 
were  peculiarly  yours.” 

No  one  can  study  this  inscription  without  becom¬ 
ing  convinced  that  it  tells  an  unvarnished  tale  of 
truth — that  here  was  really  a  rare  and  precious 
woman ;  a  Roman  matron  of  the  very  best  type, 
practical,  judicious,  courageous,  simple  in  her  habits 
and  courteous  to  all  her  guests.  And  we  feel  that 
there  is  one  human  being,  and  one  only,  of  whom 
she  is  always  thinking,  to  whom  she  has  given  her 
whole  heart- — the  husband  whose  words  and  deeds 
show  that  he  was  wholly  worthy  of  her. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  UPPER  CLASSES 

From  what  has  been  said  in  preceding  chapters  of 
the  duties  and  the  habits  of  the  two  sections  of  the 
upper  stratum  of  society,  it  will  readily  be  inferred 
that  the  kind  of  education  called  for  was  one  mainly 
of  character.  In  these  men,  whether  for  the  work 
of  business  or  of  government,  what  was  wanted  was 
the  will  to  do  well  and  justly,  and  the  instinctive 
hatred  of  all  evil  and  unjust  dealing.  Such  an 
education  of  the  will  and  character  is  supplied  (what¬ 
ever  be  its  shortcomings  in  other  ways)  by  our 
English  public  school  education,  for  men  whose  work 
in  life  is  in  many  ways  singularly  like  that  of  the 
Roman  upper  classes.  Such  an  education,  too,  was 
outlined  by  Aristotle  for  the  men  of  his  ideal  state ; 
and  Mr.  Newman’s  picture  of  the  probable  results 
of  it  is  so  suggestive  of  what  was  really  needed  at 
Rome  that  I  may  quote  it  here.1 

“As  its  outcome  at  the  age  of  twenty -one  we 
may  imagine  a  bronzed  and  hardy  youth,  healthy 
in  body  and  mind,  able  to  bear  hunger  and  hard 

1  Newman,  Politics  of  Aristotle,  L  p.  372. 

168 


cH.vi  EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  169 


physical  labour  .  .  .  not  untouched  by  studies  which 
awake  in  men  the  interest  of  civilised  beings,  and 
prepare  them  for  the  right  use  of  leisure  in  future 
years,  and  though  burdened  with  little  knowledge, 
possessed  of  an  educated  sense  of  beauty,  and  an 
ingrained  love  of  what  is  noble  and  hatred  of  all 
that  is  the  reverse.  He  would  be  more  cultivated 
and  human  than  the  best  type  of  young  Spartan, 
more  physically  vigorous  and  reverential,  though 
less  intellectually  developed,  than  the  best  type  of 
young  Athenian— a  nascent  soldier  and  servant  of 
the  state,  not,  like  most  young  Athenians  of  ability, 
a  nascent  orator.  And  as  he  would  be  only  half 
way  through  his  education  at  an  age  when  many 
Greeks  had  finished  theirs,  he  would  be  more 
conscious  of  his  own  immaturity.  We  feel  at  once 
how  different  he  would  be  from  the  clever  lads  who 
swarmed  at  Athens,  youths  with  an  infinite  capacity 
for  picking  holes,  and  capable  of  saying  something 
plausible  on  every  subject  under  the  sun.” 

If  we  note,  with  Mr.  Newman,  that  Aristotle  here 
makes  if  anything  too  little  of  intellectual  training 
(as  indeed  may  also  be  said  of  our  own  public 
schools),  and  add  to  his  picture  something  more  of 
that  knowledge  which,  when  united  with  an  honest 
will  and  healthy  body,  will  almost  infallibly  produce 
a  sound  judgment,  we  shall  have  a  type  of  character 
eminently  fitted  to  share  in  the  duties  and  the  trials 
of  the  government  of  such  empires  as  the  Roman 
and  the  British.  But  at  Rome,  in  the  age  of  Cicero, 


170 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


such  a  type  of  character  was  rare  indeed  ;  and  though 
this  was  due  to  various  causes,  some  of  which  have 
been  already  noticed, — the  building  up  of  a  Roman 
empire  before  the  Romans  were  ripe  to  appreciate 
the  duties  of  an  imperial  state,  and  the  sudden 
incoming  of  wealth  in  an  age  when  the  idea  of  its 
productive  use  was  almost  unknown, — yet  it  will  occur 
to  every  reader  that  there  must  have  been  also 
something  wrong  in  the  upbringing  of  the  youth  of 
the  upper  classes  to  account  for  the  rarity  of  really 
sound  character,  for  the  frequent  absence  of  what 
we  should  call  the  sense  of  duty,  public  and  private. 
I  propose  in  this  chapter  to  deal  with  the  question 
of  Roman  education  just  so  far  as  to  show  where  in 
Cicero’s  time  it  was  chiefly  defective.  It  is  a  subject 
that  has  been  very  completely  worked  out,  and  an 
excellent  summary  of  the  results  will  be  found  in 
the  little  volume  on  Roman  education  written  by 
the  late  Professor  A.  S.  Wilkins,  just  before  his 
lamented  death  :  but  he  was  describing  its  methods 
without  special  reference  to  its  defects,  and  it  is 
these  defects  on  which  I  wish  more  particularly  to 
dwell.1 

Let  us  notice,  in  the  first  place,  how  little  is  said 
in  the  literature  of  the  time,  including  biographies, 

1  A  list  of  the  best  authorities  will  be  found  at  the  beginning  of  Professor 
Wilkins'  book.  Of  these  by  far  the  most  useful  for  a  student  is  the 
section  in  Marquardt’s  Privatleben,  p.  79  foil.  The  two  volumes  of  Cramer 
( Geschichte  der  Erziehung,  etc.),  which  cover  all  antiquity,  are,  as  he  says, 
most  valuable  for  their  breadth  of  view.  See  also  H.  Nettleship,  Lectures 
and  Essays,  ch.  iii.  foil. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  171 

of  that  period  of  life  which  is  now  so  full  of  interest 
to  readers  of  memoirs,  so  full  of  interest  to  ourselves 
as  we  look  back  to  it  in  advancing  years.  It  may 
be  that  we  now  exaggerate  the  importance  of  child¬ 
hood,  but  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  Romans 
undervalued  the  importance  of  it.  It  may  be  that 
we  over-estimate  the  value  of  our  public-school  life, 
but  it  is  certain  that  the  Romans  had  no  such  school 
life  to  be  proud  of.  Biography  was  at  this  time  a 
favourite  form  of  literature,  and  some  of  the  memoirs 
then  written  were  available  for  use  by  later  writers, 
such  as  Valerius  Maximus,  Suetonius,  and  Plutarch ; 
yet  it  is  curious  how  little  has  come  down  to  us  of 
the  childhood  or  boyhood  of  the  great  men  of  the 
time.  Plutarch  indeed  was  deeply  interested  in 
education,  including  that  of  childhood,  and  we  can 
hardly  doubt  that  he  would  have  used  in  his  Roman 
Lives  any  information  that  came  in  his  way.  He 
does  tell  us  something,  for  which  we  are  eternally 
indebted  to  him,  of  old  Cato’s  method  of  educating 
his  son,1  and  something  too,  in  his  Life  of  Aemilius 
Paullus ,2  of  the  education  of  the  eldest  son  of  that 
family,  the  great  Scipio  Aemilianus.  But  in  each 
of  these  Lives  we  shall  find  that  this  information  is 
used  rather  to  bring  out  the  character  of  the  father 
than  to  illustrate  the  up-bringing  of  the  son  ;  and  as 
a  rule  the  Lives  begin  with  the  parentage  of  the  hero, 
and  then  pass  on  at  once  to  his  early  manhood. 

The  Life  of  the  younger  Cato,  however,  is  an 


1  Plut.  Cato  the  Elder,  ch.  xx. 


2  Plut.  Aem.  Paul.  ch.  vi. 


172 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


exception  to  the  rule,  which  we  must  ascribe  to  the 
attraction  which  all  historians  and  philosophers  felt 
to  this  singular  character.  Plutarch  knew  the  name 
and  character  of  Cato’s  paedagogus,  Sarpedon,1  and 
tells  us  that  he  was  an  obedient  child,  but  would 
ask  for  the  reason  of  everything,  in  those  questions 
beginning  with  “  why  ”  which  are  often  embarrassing 
to  the  teacher.  Two  stories  in  the  second  and  third 
chapters  of  this  Life  are  also  found  in  that  insipid 
medley  of  fact  and  fable  drawn  up  in  the  reign  of 
Tiberius,  by  Valerius  Maximus,  for  educational  pur¬ 
poses  ; 2  a  third,  which  is  peculiarly  significant,  and 
seems  to  bear  the  stamp  of  truth,  is  only  to  be  found 
in  Plutarch.  I  give  it  here  in  full : 

“  On  another  occasion,  when  a  kinsman  on  his 
birthday  invited  some  boys  to  supper  and  Cato 
with  them,  in  order  to  pass  the  time  they  played  in  a 
part  of  the  house  by  themselves,  younger  and  older 
together :  and  the  game  consisted  of  accusations  and 
trials,  and  the  arresting  of  those  who  were  convicted. 
Now  one  of  the  boys  convicted,  who  was  of  a  hand¬ 
some  presence,  being  dragged  off  by  an  older  boy  to 
a  chamber  and  shut  up,  called  on  Cato  for  aid.  Cato 
seeing  what  was  going  on  came  to  the  door,  and 

OOO  7 

pushing  through  those  who  were  posted  in  front  of 
it  to  prevent  him,  took  the  boy  out ;  and  went  off 

1  Plut.  Cato  minor  1  ad  fin.  What  is  told  in  the  earlier  part  of  this 
chapter  may  perhaps  be  invention,  based  on  the  character  of  the  grown 
man ;  but  this  information  at  the  end  may  be  derived  from  a  contem¬ 
porary  source. 

5  Val.  Max.  iii.  1.  2. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  173 

home  with  him  in  a  passion,  accompanied  by  other 
boys.” 

This  is  a  unique  picture  of  the  ways  and  games  of 
boys  in  the  last  century  of  the  Republic.  Like  the 
children  of  all  times,  they  play  at  that  in  which  they 
see  their  fathers  most  active  and  interested ;  and  this 
particular  game  must  have  been  played  in  the  miser¬ 
able  years  of  the  civil  wars  and  the  proscriptions,  as 
Cato  was  born  in  95  B.c.  Whether  the  part  played 
by  Cato  in  the  story  be  true  or  not,  the  lesson  for  us 
is  the  same,  and  we  shall  find  it  entirely  confirmed 
in  the  course  of  this  chapter.  The  main  object  of 
education  was  the  mastery  of  the  art  of  oratory,  and 
the  chief  practical  use  of  that  art  was  to  enable  a 
man  to  gain  a  reputation  as  an  advocate  in  the 
criminal  courts.1 

Cicero  had  one  boy,  and  for  several  years  two,  to 
look  after,  one  his  own  son  Marcus,  born  in  65  B.c., 
and  the  other  Quintus,  the  son  of  his  brother,  a  year 
older.  Of  these  boys,  until  they  took  the  toga  virilis, 
he  says  hardly  anything  in  his  letters  to  Atticus, 
though  Atticus  was  the  uncle  of  the  elder  boy.  Only 
when  his  brother  Quintus  was  with  Caesar  in  Gaul 
do  we  really  begin  to  hear  anything  about  them,  and 
even  then  more  than  once,  after  a  brief  mention  of 
the  young  Quintus,  he  goes  off  at  once  to  tell  his 
brother  about  the  progress  of  the  villas  that  are  being 

1  There  is  a  single  story  ot  Cicero’s  boyhood  in  Plutarch’s  Life  of  him, 
ch.  ii. ,  that  parents  used  to  visit  his  school  because  of  his  fame  as  a  scholar, 
etc.,  but  to  this  I  do  not  attach  much  importance. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


04 

built  for  him.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  father  wished 
to  know  about  the  boy  as  well  as  about  the  villas ; 1 
and  in  one  letter  we  find  Cicero  telling  Quintus  that 
he  wishes  to  teach  his  boy  himself,  as  he  has  been 
teaching  his  own  son.  “  I’ll  do  wonders  with  him  if 
I  can  get  him  to  myself  when  I  am  at  leisure,  for 
at  Rome  there  is  not  time  to  breathe  (nam  Romae 
respirandi  non  est  locus).”2  It  is  clear  that  the 
boys,  who  were  only  eleven  and  twelve  in  this  year 
54,  were  being  educated  at  home,  and  as  clear  too 
that  Cicero,  who  was  just  then  very  much  occupied 
in  the  courts,  had  no  time  to  attend  to  them  himself. 
Young  Quintus,  we  hear,  gets  on  well  with  his 
rhetoric  master ;  Cicero  does  not  wholly  approve  the 
style  in  which  he  is  being  taught,  and  thinks  he  may 
be  able  to  teach  him  his  own  more  learned  style, 
though  the  boy  himself  seems  to  prefer  the  declama¬ 
tory  method  of  the  teacher.3  The  last  entry  in  these 
letters  to  the  absent  father  is  curious  : 4  “I  love  your 
Cicero  as  he  deserves  and  as  I  ought.  But  I  am 
letting  him  leave  me,  because  I  don’t  want  to  keep 
him  from  his  masters,  and  because  his  mother  is 
going  away, — and  without  her  I  am  nervous  about 
his  greediness !  ”  Up  to  this  point  he  has  written 
in  the  warmest  terms  of  the  boy,  but  here,  as  so 
often  in  Cicero’s  letters  about  other  people,  disappro¬ 
bation  is  barely  hinted  in  order  not  to  hurt  the 
feelings  of  his  correspondent. 

1  So  in  ad  Q.F.  iii.  1.  7  :  de  Cicerone  tuo  quod  me  semper  rogas,  etc. 

2  lb.  3  lb.  iii.  3.  4.  4  lb.  iii.  9. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  175 

The  one  thing  that  is  really  pleasing  in  these 
allusions  is  the  genuine  desire  of  both  parents  that 
their  boys  shall  be  of  good  disposition  and  well 
educated.  But  of  real  training  or  of  home  discipline 
we  unluckily  get  no  hint.  We  must  go  elsewhere  for 
what  little  we  know  about  the  training  of  children. 
Let  us  now  turn  to  this  for  a  while,  remembering 
that  it  means  parental  example  and  the  discipline  of 
the  body  as  well  as  the  acquisition  of  elementary 
knowledge.  Unfortunately,  no  book  has  survived 
from  that  age  in  which  the  education  of  children 
was  treated  of.  Varro  wrote  such  a  book,  but  we 
know  of  it  little  more  than  its  name,  Catus,  sive  de 
liberis  educandis }  In  the  fourth  book  of  his  de 
Republica  Cicero  seems  to  have  dealt  with  “  disci- 
plina  puerilis,”  but  from  the  few  fragments  that 
survive  there  is  little  to  be  learnt,  and  we  may  be 
pretty  sure  that  Cicero  could  not  write  of  this  with 
much  knowledge  or  experience.  The  most  famous 
passage  is  that  in  which  he  quotes  Polybius  as 
blaming  the  Romans  for  neglecting  it ; 2  certainly, 
he  adds,  they  never  wished  that  the  State  should 
regulate  the  education  of  children,  or  that  it  should 
be  all  on  one  model ;  the  Greeks  took  much  unneces¬ 
sary  trouble  about  it.  The  Greeks  of  his  own  time 
whom  Cicero  knew  did  not  inspire  him  with  any 
exalted  idea  of  the  results  of  Greek  education ;  but 
we  should  like  to  know  whether  in  this  book  of  his 

1  See  the  few  fragments  in  the  Appendix  to  Riese’s  edition  of  the  remains 
of  Varro’s  Menippean  Satires,  p.  248  foil.  2  De  Rep.  iv.  3.  3. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


176 

work  on  the  State  he  did  not  express  some  feeling 
that  on  the  children  themselves,  and  therefore  on 
their  training,  the  fortunes  of  the  State  depend. 
Such  had  been  the  feeling  of  the  old  Romans,  though 
their  State  laid  down  no  laws  for  education,  but 
trusted  to  the  force  of  tradition  and  custom.  Old 
Cato  believed  himself  to  be  acting  like  an  old  Roman 
when  he  looked  after  the  washing  and  dressing  of  his 
baby,  and  guided  the  child  with  personal  care  as  he 
grew  up,  writing  books  for  his  use  in  large  letters 
with  his  own  hand.1  But  since  Cato’s  day  the  idea 
of  the  State  had  lost  strength ;  and  this  had  an 
unfortunate  effect  on  education,  as  on  married  life. 
The  one  hope  of  the  age,  the  Stoic  philosophy,  was 
concerned  with  those  who  had  attained  to  reason, 
i.e.  to  those  who  had  reached  their  fourteenth  year ; 
in  the  Stoic  view  the  child  was  indeed  potentially 
reasonable,  and  thus  a  subject  of  interest,  but  in 
the  Stoic  ethics  education  does  not  take  a  very 
prominent  place.2  We  are  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that  a  real  interest  in  education  as  distinct  from 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge  was  as  much  wanting 
at  Rome  in  Cicero’s  day  as  it  has  been  till  lately 
in  England  ;  and  that  it  was  not  again  awakened 
until  Christianity  had  made  the  children  sacred,  not 
only  because  the  Master  so  spoke  of  them,  but 
because  they  were  inheritors  of  eternal  life. 

1  Plut.  Cato  20. 

2  There  is  probably  an  allusion  to  the  Stoic  view,  that  reason  is  not 
attained  till  the  fourteenth  year,  in  Virgil's  line  in  Eel.  4.  27. 


vi  EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  177 

Yet  there  had  once  been  a  Roman  home  education 
admirably  suited  to  bring  up  a  race  of  hardy  and 
dutiful  men  and  women.  It  was  an  education  in 
the  family  virtues,  thereafter  to  be  turned  to  account 
in  the  service  of  the  State.  The  mother  nursed  her 
own  children  and  tended  them  in  their  earliest  years. 
Then  followed  an  education  which  we  may  call  one 
in  bodily  activity,  in  demeanour,  in  religion,  and  in 
duty  to  the  State.  It  is  true  that  we  have  hardly 
any  evidence  of  this  but  tradition  ;  but  when  Yarro, 
in  one  of  the  precious  fragments  of  his  book  on 
education,  describes  his  own  bringing  up  in  his 
Sabine  home  at  Reate,  we  may  be  fairly  sure  that  it 
adequately  represents  that  of  the  old  Roman  farmer.1 
He  tells  us  that  he  had  a  single  tunic  and  toga,  was 
seldom  allowed  a  bath,  and  was  made  to  learn  to  ride 
bareback — which  reminds  us  of  the  life  of  the  young 
Boer  of  the  Transvaal  before  the  late  war.  In  another 
fragment  he  also  tells  us  that  both  boys  and  girls 
used  to  wait  on  their  parents  at  table.2  Cato  the 
elder,  in  a  fragment  preserved  by  Festus,3  says  that 
he  was  brought  up  from  his  earliest  years  to  be 
frugal,  hardy,  and  industrious,  and  worked  steadily 
on  the  farm  (in  the  Sabine  country),  in  a  stony 
region  where  he  had  to  dig  and  plant  the  flinty  soil. 
The  tradition  of  such  a  healthy  rearing  remained  in 
the  memory  of  the  Romans,  and  associated  itself  with 

1  in  Nonius,  p.  108,  s.v.  ephippium.  Cp.  the  account  of  the  education 
of  Cato’s  young  son,  Plut.  Cato,  20.  Cp.  also  Virg.  JEn.  ix.  602  foil. 

9  in  Nonius,  p.  156,  s.v.  puerae.  *  p.  281,  ed.  Muller. 

N 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


178 

the  Sabines  of  central  Italy,  the  type  of  men  who 
could  be  called  frugi : 

rusticorum  mascula  militmn 
proles,  Sabellis  docta  ligonibus 
versare  glebas  et  severae 
matris  ad  arbitrium  recisos 
portare  fustis.1 

It  was  an  education  also  in  demeanour,  and  especi¬ 
ally  in  obedience2  and  modesty.  In  that  chapter 
of  Plutarch’s  Life  of  Cato  which  has  been  already 
quoted,  after  describing  how  the  father  taught  his 
boy  to  ride,  to  box,  to  swim,  and  so  on,  he  goes  on, 
“  And  he  was  as  careful  not  to  utter  an  indecent 
word  before  his  son,  as  he  would  have  been  in  the 
presence  of  the  Vestal  Virgins.”  The  pudor  of  child¬ 
hood  was  always  esteemed  at  Rome :  “  adolescens 
pudentissimus  ”  is  the  highest  praise  that  can  be  given 
even  to  a  grown  youth  ; 3  and  there  are  signs  that  a 
feeling  survived  of  a  certain  sacredness  of  childhood, 
which  Juvenal  reflects  in  his  famous  words,  “  Maxima 
debetur  puero  reverentia.”  The  origin  of  this  feeling 
is  probably  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  both  boys 
and  girls  were  in  ancient  times  brought  up  to  help 
in  performing  the  religious  duties  of  the  household, 
as  camilli  and  camillae  (acolytes) ;  and  this  is  per¬ 
haps  the  reason  why  they  wore,  throughout  Roman 
history,  the  toga  praetexta  with  the  purple  stripe, 
like  magistrates  and  sacrificing  priests.4  It  is  hardly 

1  Hor.  Odes  iii.  6.  2  Dionys.  Hal.  ii.  26. 

3  Cic.  pro  ClueMio  60.  165  ;  Marq.  Privatleben,  p.  87. 

4  See  a  paper  by  the  author  in  Classical  Rev.  vol.  x.  p.  317,  in  which 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  179 

necessary  to  say  that  this  religious  side  of  education 
was  an  education  in  the  practice  of  cult,  and  not  in 
any  kind  of  creed  or  ideas  about  the  gods ;  but  so 
far  as  it  went  its  influence  was  good,  as  instilling 
the  habit  of  reverence  and  the  sense  of  duty  from  a 
very  early  age.  Though  the  Romans  of  Cicero’s  time 
had  lost  their  old  conviction  of  the  necessity  of 
propitiating  the  gods  of  the  State,  it  is  probable  that 
the  tradition  of  family  worship  still  survived  in  the 
majority  of  households. 

Again,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  idea  of  duty 
to  the  State  was  not  omitted  in  this  old-fashioned 
education.  Cato  wrote  histories  for  his  son  in  large 
letters,  “so  that  without  stirring  out  of  the  house, 
he  might  gain  a  knowledge  of  the  illustrious  actions 
of  the  ancient  Romans,  and  of  the  customs  of  his 
country  ”  :  but  it  is  significant  that  in  the  next  two  or 
three  generations  the  writers  of  annals  took  to  glorify¬ 
ing — and  falsifying — the  achievements  of  members 
of  their  own  families,  rather  than  those  of  the  State 
as  a  whole.  Boys  learnt  the  XII  Tables  by  heart, 
and  Cicero  tells  us  that  he  did  this  in  his  own  boy¬ 
hood,  though  the  practice  had  since  then  been  dropped.1 
That  ancient  code  of  law  would  have  acted,  we  may 
imagine,  as  a  kind  of  catechism  of  the  rules  laid  down 

evidence  is  collected  in  support  of  this  view.  That  the  praetexta  had  a 
quasi-sacred  character  seems  certain;  see  e.g.  Hor.  Epod.  5.  7  ;  Persius, 
v.  30  ;  pseudo  -  Quintilian,  Declam.  340.  See  Henzen,  Acta  Fratrum 
Arvalium  15,  for  the  pueri  patrimi  et  matrimi,  representing  in  that  ancient 
cult  the  children  of  the  old  Roman  family. 

1  Cic.  de  Legibus,  ii.  59. 


i8o 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


by  the  State  for  the  conduct  of  its  citizens,  and  as  a 
reminder  that  though  the  State  had  outgrown  the 
rough  legal  clothing  of  its  infancy,  it  had  from  the 
very  beginning  undertaken  the  duty  of  regulating 
the  conduct  of  its  citizens  in  their  relations  with  each 
other.  Again,  when  a  great  Roman  died,  it  is  said  to 
have  been  the  practice  for  parents  to  take  their  boys 
to  hear  the  funeral  oration  in  praise  of  one  who  had 
done  great  service  to  the  State.1 

All  this  was  admirable,  and  if  Rome  had  not 
become  a  great  imperial  state,  and  if  some  super¬ 
structure  of  the  humanities  could  have  been  added 
in  a  natural  process  of  development,  it  might  have 
continued  for  ages  as  an  invaluable  educational  basis. 
But  the  conditions  under  which  alone  it  could  flourish 
had  long  ceased  to  be.  It  is  obvious  that  it  depended 
entirely  on  the  presence  of  the  parents  and  their 
interest  in  the  children ;  as  regards  the  boys  it 
depended  chiefly  on  the  father.  Now  ever  since  the 
Roman  dominion  was  extended  beyond  sea,  i.e.  ever 
since  the  first  two  Punic  wars,  the  father  of  a 
family  must  often  have  been  away  from  home  for 
long  periods ;  he  might  have  to  serve  in  foreign  wars 
for  years  together,  and  in  numberless  cases  never  saw 
Italy  again.  Even  if  he  remained  in  Rome,  the  ever 
increasing  business  of  the  State  would  occupy  him 
far  more  than  was  compatible  with  a  constant  per¬ 
sonal  care  for  his  children.  The  conscientious  Roman 

1  Polyb.  vi.  53.  For  an  account  of  the  practice  of  laudatio  see  Marq. 
Privatleben,  p.  346  foil.  This,  too,  degenerated  into  falsification. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  181 


father  of  the  last  two  centuries  B.c.  must  have  felt 
even  more  keenly  than  English  parents  in  India  the 
sorrow  of  parting  from  their  children  at  an  age  when 
they  are  most  in  need  of  parental  care.  We  have 
to  remember  that  in  Cicero’s  day  letter-writing  had 
only  recently  become  possible  on  an  extended  scale 
through  the  increasing  business  of  the  publicani  in 
the  provinces  (see  above,  p.  74);  the  Roman  father 
in  Spain  or  Asia  seldom  heard  of  what  his  wife  and 
children  were  doing,  and  the  inevitable  result  was 
that  he  began  to  cease  to  care.  In  fact  more  and 
more  came  to  depend  on  the  mothers,  as  with  our 
own  hard-working  professional  classes ;  and  we  have 
seen  reason  to  believe  that  in  the  last  age  of  the 
Republic  the  average  mother  was  not  too  often  a 
conscientious  or  dutiful  woman.  The  constant  liability 
to  divorce  would  naturally  diminish  her  interest  in 
her  children,  for  after  separation  she  had  no  part  or 
lot  in  them.  And  this  no  doubt  is  one  reason  why 
at  this  particular  period  we  hear  so  little  of  the  life 
of  children.  There  is  indeed  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  they  themselves  were  unhappy  ;  they  had  plenty 
of  games,  which  were  so  familiar  that  the  poets  often 
allude  to  them — hoops,  tops,  dolls,  blind  man’s  buff, 
and  the  favourite  games  of  “nuts”  and  “king.”1 
But  the  real  question  is  not  whether  they  could  enjoy 
their  young  life,  but  whether  they  were  learning  to  use 
their  bodies  and  minds  to  good  purpose. 

When  a  boy  was  about  seven  years  old,  the 

1  A  full  list  of  games  will  be  found  in  Marquardt,  Privatleben ,  p.  814  foil. 


182 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


question  would  arise  in  most  families  whether  he 
should  remain  at  home  or  go  to  an  elementary 
school.1  No  doubt  it  was  usually  decided  by  the 
means  at  the  command  of  the  parents.  A  wealthy 
father  might  see  his  son  through  his  whole  education 
at  home  by  providing  a  tutor  (paedagogus),  and 
more  advanced  teachers  as  they  were  needed.  Cato 
indeed,  as  we  have  seen,  found  time  to  do  much  of 
the  work  himself,  but  he  also  had  a  slave  who  taught 
his  own  and  other  children.  Aemilius  Paullus  had 
several  teachers  in  his  house  for  this  purpose,  under 
his  own  superintendence.2  Cicero  too,  as  we  have 
seen,  seems  to  have  educated  his  son  at  home,  though 
he  himself  is  said  to  have  attended  a  school.  But 
we  may  suppose  that  the  ordinary  boy  of  the  upper 
classes  went  to  school,  under  the  care  of  a  paedagogus, 
after  the  Greek  fashion,  rising  before  daylight,  and 
submitting  to  severe  discipline,  which,  together  with 
the  absolute  necessity  for  a  free  Roman  of  attaining 
a  certain  level  of  acquirement,  effectually  compelled 
him  to  learn  to  read,  write,  and  cipher.3  This 
elementary  work  must  have  been  done  well ;  we  hear 
little  or  nothing  of  gross  ignorance  or  neglected 
education. 

There  were,  however,  very  serious  defects  in  this 
system  of  elementary  education.  Not  only  the 
schoolmaster  himself,  but  the  paedagogus  who  was 

1  The  question  is  discussed  by  Quintilian,  i.  2. 

2  Plut.  Aem.  Pauli.  6. 

3  Full  details  about  elementary  schools  in  Wilkins,  ch.  iv.,  and  Marq. 
p.  90  foil. 


yi  EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  183 

responsible  for  the  boy’s  conduct,  was  almost  always 
either  a  slave  or  a  freedman  ;  and  neither  slave  nor 
freedman  could  be  an  object  of  profound  respect  for  a 
Roman  boy.  Hence  no  doubt  the  necessity  of  main¬ 
taining  discipline  rather  by  means  of  corporal  punish¬ 
ment  (to  which  the  Romans  never  seem  to  have 
objected,  though  Quintilian  criticises  it) 1  than  by 
moral  force ;  a  fact  which  is  attested  both  in 
literature  and  art.  The  responsibility  again  which 
attached  to  the  paedagogus  for  the  boy’s  morals 
must  have  been  another  inducement  to  the  parents 
to  renounce  their  proper  work  of  supervision.2  And 
once  more,  the  great  majority  of  teachers  were  Greeks. 
As  the  boy  was  born  into  a  bilingual  Graeco-Roman 
world,  of  which  the  Greeks  were  the  only  cultured 
people,  this  might  seem  natural  and  inevitable ;  but 
we  know  that  in  his  heart  the  Roman  despised  the 
Greek.  Of  witnesses  in  their  favour  we  might  expect 
Cicero  to  be  the  strongest,  but  Cicero  occasionally 
lets  us  know  what  he  really  thinks  of  their  moral 
character.  In  a  remarkable  passage  in  his  speech 
for  Flaccus,  which  is  fully  borne  out  by  remarks  in 
his  private  letters,  he  says  that  he  grants  them  all 
manner  of  literary  and  rhetorical  skill,  but  that  the 
race  never  understood  or  cared  for  the  sacred  binding 
force  of  testimony  given  in  a  court  of  law.3  Thus 
the  Roman  boy  was  in  the  anomalous  position  of 

1  Quintil.  i  3.  14. 

2  Plutarch  is  careful  to  tell  us  that  Aem.  Paullus  exercised  this  super¬ 
vision  himself  (ch.  vi. ). 

8  Pro  Flacco  4.  9.  Cp.  ad  Quint.  Fratr.  i.  2.  4. 


CHAP. 


184  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

having  to  submit  to  chastisement  from  men  whom 
as  men  he  despised.  Assuredly  we  should  not  like  our 
public  schoolboys  to  be  taught  or  punished  by  men 
of  low  station  or  of  an  inferior  standard  of  morals. 
It  is  men,  not  methods,  that  really  tell  in  education  ; 
the  Roman  schoolboy  needed  some  one  to  believe  in, 
some  one  to  whom  to  be  wholly  loyal ;  the  very  same 
overpowering  need  which  was  so  obvious  in  the 
political  world  of  Rome  in  the  last  century  b.c.1 

Of  this  elementary  teaching  little  need  be  said 
here,  as  it  did  not  bear  directly  on  life  and  conduct. 
There  is,  however,  one  feature  of  it  which  may  claim 
our  attention  for  a  moment.  Both  in  reading  and 
writing,  and  also  for  learning  by  heart,  sententiae 
(yvu were  used,  which  remind  us  of  our  copy-book 
maxims.  Of  these  we  have  a  large  collection,  more 
than  700,  selected  from  the  mimes  of  Publilius  Syrus, 
who  came  to  Rome  from  Syria  as  a  slave  in  the  age 
of  which  we  are  writing,  and  after  obtaining  his 
freedom  gained  great  reputation  as  the  author  of 
many  popular  plays  of  this  kind,  in  which  he  con¬ 
trived  to  insert  these  wise  saws  and  maxims.  It  is 
not  likely  that  they  found  their  way  into  the  schools 
all  at  once,  but  in  the  early  Empire  we  find  them 
already  alluded  to  as  educational  material  by  Seneca 
the  elder,2  and  we  may  take  them  as  a  fair  example 
of  the  maxims  already  in  use  in  Cicero’s  time, 

1  That  the  boy  was  not  always  respectful  is  shown  in  an  amusing  passage 
in  Plautus,  Bacchides,  ill.  iii.  34  foil. 

2  Sen.  Controversial,  vii.  3.  8. 


yi  EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  185 

making  some  allowance  for  their  superior  neatness 
and  wisdom.  Here  are  a  few  specimens,  taken 
almost  at  random ;  it  will  be  seen  that  they  convey 
much  shrewd  good  sense,  and  occasionally  have  the 
true  ring  of  humanity  as  well  as  the  flavour  of  Stoic 
sapientia.  I  quote  from  the  excellent  edition  by 
Mr.  Bickford-Smith.1 

Avarus  ipse  miseriae  causa  est  suae. 

Audendo  virtus  crescit,  tardando  timor. 

Cicatrix  conscientiae  pro  vulnere  est. 

Fortunam  2  citius  reperias  quam  retineas. 

Gravissima  est  probi  hominis  iracundia. 

Homo  totiens  moritur,  quotiens  amittit  suos. 

Homo  vitae  commodatus,  non  donatus  est. 

Humanitatis  optima  est  certatio. 

Iucundum  nil  est,  nisi  quod  reficit  varietas. 

Malum  est  consilium  quod  mutari  non  potest. 

Minus  saepe  pecces,  si  scias  quod  nescias. 

Perpetuo  vincit  qui  utitur  dementia. 

Qui  ius  iurandum  servat,  quovis  pervenit. 

Ubi  peccat  aetas  maior,  male  discit  minor. 

I  have  quoted  these  to  show  that  Roman  children 
were  not  without  opportunity  even  in  early  school¬ 
days  of  laying  to  heart  much  that  might  lead  them 
to  good  and  generous  conduct  in  later  life,  as  well 
as  to  practical  wisdom.  But  we  know  the  fate  of 
our  own  copy-book  maxims ;  we  know  that  it  is  not 
through  them  that  our  children  become  good  men 
and  women,  but  by  the  example  and  the  un-system- 

1  London,  C.  J.  Clay  and  Sons,  1895. 

2  Fortuna  occurs  many  times,  as  in  the  so-called  sententiae  Varronis 
printed  at  the  end  of  Riese’s  edition  of  the  fragments  of  Varro’s  Menippean 
satires.  This  is  characteristic  of  the  period. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


1 86 

atised  precepts  of  parents  and  teachers.  No  such  neat 
71 >w/acu  can  do  much  good  without  a  sanction  of 
greater  force  than  any  that  is  inherent  in  them, 
and  such  a  sanction  was  not  to  be  found  in  the  ferula 
of  the  grammaticus  or  the  paedagogus.  Once  more, 
it  is  men  and  not  methods  that  supply  the  real 
educational  force. 

Probably  the  greatest  difficulty  which  the  Roman 
boy  had  to  face  in  his  school  life  was  the  learning  of 
arithmetic ;  it  was  this,  we  may  imagine,  that  made 
him  think  of  his  master,  as  Horace  did  of  the  worthy 
Orbilius,1  as  a  man  of  blows  (plagosus).  This  is  not 
the  place  to  give  an  account  of  the  methods  of 
reckoning  then  used  ;  they  will  be  found  fully 
explained  in  Marquardt’s  Privatlebcn,  and  com¬ 
pressed  into  a  page  by  Professor  Wilkins  in  his 
Roman  Education .2  It  is  enough  to  say  that  they 
were  as  indispensable  as  they  were  difficult  to  learn. 
“  An  orator  was  expected,  according  to  Quintilian 
(i.  10.  35),  not  only  to  be  able  to  make  his  calcula¬ 
tions  in  court,  but  also  to  show  clearly  to  his 
audience  how  he  arrived  at  his  results.”  From  the 
small  inn-keeper  to  the  great  capitalist,  every  man 
of  business  needed  to  be  perfectly  at  home  in  reckon¬ 
ing  sums  of  money.  The  magistrates,  especially 
quaestors  and  aediles,  had  staffs  of  clerks  who 
must  have  been  skilled  accountants ;  the  provincial 
governors  and  all  who  were  engaged  in  collecting 

1  Hor.  Epist.  i.  1.  70. 

3  Marq.  Privatlebcn ,  p.  95  foil.  ;  Wilkins,  p.  53. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  187 

the  tributes  of  the  provinces,  as  well  as  in  lending  the 
money  to  enable  the  tax-payers  to  pay  (see  above, 
p.  71  foil.),  were  constantly  busy  with  their  ledgers. 
The  humbler  inhabitants  of  the  Empire  had  long 
been  growing  familiar  with  the  Roman  aptitude  for 
arithmetic.1 

Grais  ingenium,  Grais  dedit  ore  rotundo 
Musa  loqui,  praeter  laudem  nullius  avaris. 

Romani  pueri  longis  rationibus  assem 

discunt  in  partes  centum  diducere.  “  Dicat 

filius  Albini :  si  de  quincunce  remota  est 

uncia,  quid  superat  ?  poteras  dixisse.”  “  triens.”  “  eu  ! 

rem  poteris  servare  tuam.” 2 

This  familiar  passage  may  be  quoted  once  more  to 
illustrate  the  practical  nature  of  the  Roman  school 
teaching  and  the  ends  which  it  was  to  serve. 
Utilitarian  to  the  backbone,  the  ordinary  Roman, 
like  the  ordinary  British,  parent,  wanted  his  son  to 
get  on  in  life ;  it  was  only  the  parent  of  a  higher 
class  who  sacrificed  anything  to  the  Muses,  and  then 
chiefly  because  in  a  public  career  it  was  de  rigueur 
that  the  boy  should  not  be  ignorant  or  boorish. 

When  the  son  of  well-to-do  parents  had  mastered 
the  necessary  elements,  he  was  advanced  to  the  higher 
type  of  school  kept  by  a  grammaticus,  and  there 
made  his  first  real  acquaintance  with  literature ; 
and  this  was  henceforward,  until  he  began  to  study 
rhetoric  and  philosophy,  the  staple  of  his  work.  We 

1  There  is  a  good  example  of  this  in  the  well-known  case  of  Brutus’  loan 
to  the  Salaminians  of  Cyprus  :  see  especially  Cic.  ad  Att.  v.  21.  12. 

2  Hor.  Ars  Poet.  323  foil. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


1 88 

may  note,  by  the  way,  that  science,  i.e.  the  higher 
mathematics  and  astronomy,  was  reckoned  under 
the  head  of  philosophy,  while  medicine  and  juris¬ 
prudence  had  become  professional  studies,1  to  learn 
which  it  was  necessary  to  attach  yourself  to  an 
experienced  practitioner,  as  with  the  art  of  war. 
In  the  grammar  schools,  as  we  may  call  them,  the 
course  was  purely  literary  and  humanistic,  and  it 
was  conducted  both  in  Greek  and  Latin,  but  chiefly 
in  Greek,  as  a  natural  result  of  the  comparative 
scantiness  of  Latin  literature.2  Homer,  Hesiod,  and 
Menander  were  the  favourite  authors  studied ;  only 
later  on,  after  the  full  bloom  of  the  Augustan 
literature,  did  Latin  poets,  especially  Virgil  and 
Horace,  take  a  place  of  almost  equal  importance. 
The  study  of  the  Greek  poets  was  apparently  a 
thorough  one.  It  included  the  teaching  of  language, 
grammar,  metre,  style,  and  subject  matter,  and  was 
aided  by  reading  aloud,  which  was  reckoned  of  great 
importance,  and  learning  by  heart,  on  the  part  of  the 
pupils.  In  the  discussion  of  the  subject  matter  any 
amount  of  comment  was  freely  allowed  to  the  master, 
who  indeed  was  expected  to  have  at  his  fingers’  ends 
explanations  of  all  sorts  of  allusions,  and  thus  to 
enable  the  boys  to  pick  up  a  great  deal  of  odd  know¬ 
ledge  and  a  certain  amount  of  history,  mixed  up  of 
course  with  a  large  percentage  of  valueless  mythology. 

1  Mommsen,  Hist,  of  Rome,  iv.  p.  563. 

s  Quintilian  was  of  opinion  that  Greek  authors  should  precede  Latin : 
i.  1.  12. 


n  EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  189 

“In  grammaticis,”  says  Cicero, “poetarum pertractatio, 
historiarum  cognitio,  verborum  interpretatio,  pro- 
nuntiandi  quidam  sonus.”  1  The  method,  if  such  it  can 
be  called,  was  not  at  all  unlike  that  pursued  in  our  own 
public  schools,  Eton,  for  example,  before  new  methods 
and  subjects  came  in.  Its  great  defect  in  each  case 
was  that  it  gave  but  little  opportunity  for  learning 
to  distinguish  fact  from  fancy,  or  acquiring  that 
scientific  habit  of  mind  which  is  now  becoming 
essential  for  success  in  all  departments  of  life,  and 
which  at  Rome  was  so  rare  that  it  seems  audacious  to 
claim  it  even  for  such  a  man  of  action  as  Caesar,  or 
for  such  a  man  of  letters  as  Varro.  In  England  this 
defect  was  compensated  to  some  extent  by  the  manly 
tone  of  school  life,  but  at  Rome  that  side  of  school 
education  was  wanting,  and  the  result  was  a  want  of 
solidity  both  intellectual  and  moral. 

The  one  saving  feature,  given  a  really  good  and 
high-minded  teacher,  might  be  the  appeal  to  the 
example  of  the  great  and  good  men  of  the  past,  both 
Greek  and  Roman,  and  the  study  of  their  motives  in 
action,  in  good  fortune  and  ill.  This  is  the  kind  of 
teaching  which  we  find  illustrated  in  the  book  of 
Valerius  Maximus,  which  has  already  been  alluded  to, 
who  takes  some  special  virtue  or  fine  quality  as  the 
subject  of  most  of  his  chapters,2 — fortitudo,  patientia, 
abstinentia,  moderatio,  pietas  erga  parentes,  amicitia, 

1  De  Oratore,  i.  187. 

*  There  are  many  subjects  in  the  book  of  other  kinds,  but  all  are 
illustrated  in  exactly  the  same  way. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


190 

and  so  on,  and  illustrates  them  by  examples  and 
stories  drawn  mainly  from  Roman  history,  partly  also 
from  Greek.  This  kind  of  appeal  to  the  young  mind 
was  undoubtedly  good,  and  the  finest  product  of  the 
method  is  the  immortal  work  of  Plutarch,  the  Lives 
of  the  great  men  of  Greece  and  Rome,  drawn  up  for 
ethical  rather  than  historical  purposes.  But  here 
again  we  must  note  a  serious  drawback.  Any  one  who 
turns  over  the  pages  of  Valerius  will  see  that  these 
stories  of  the  great  men  of  the  past  are  so  detached 
from  their  historical  surroundings  that  they  could  not 
possibly  serve  as  helps  in  the  practical  conduct  of 
life ;  they  might  indeed  do  positive  mischief,  by 
leading  a  shallow  reasoner  to  suppose  that  what  may 
have  been  justifiable  at  one  time  and  under  certain 
circumstances,  regicide,  for  example,  or  exposure  of 
oneself  in  battle,  is  justifiable  at  all  times  and  in 
all  circumstances.  Such  an  appeal  failed  also  by 
discouraging  ohe  habit  of  thinking  about  the  facts 
and  problems  of  the  day  ;  and  right-minded  men  like 
Cicero  and  Cato  the  younger  both  suffered  from  this 
weakness  of  a  purely  literary  early  training.  Another 
drawback  is  that  this  teaching  inevitably  exaggerated 
the  personal  element  in  history,  at  the  very  time  too 
when  personalities  were  claiming  more  than  their  due 
share  of  the  world’s  attention  ;  and  thus  the  great 
lessons  which  Polybius  had  tried  to  teach  the  Graeco- 
Roman  world,  of  seeking  for  causes  in  historical 
investigation,  and  of  meditating  on  the  phenomena  of 
the  world  you  live  in,  were  passed  over  or  forgotten. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  191 

But  so  far  as  the  study  of  language,  of  artistic 
diction,  of  elocution,  and  intelligent  reading  could 
help  a  hoy  to  prepare  himself  for  life,  this  education 
was  good ;  more  especially  good  as  laying  a  founda¬ 
tion  for  the  acquirement  of  that  art  of  oratory  which, 
from  old  Cato’s  time  onwards,  had  been  the  chief 
end  to  be  aimed  at  by  all  intending  to  take  part  in 
public  life.  Cato  indeed  had  well  said  to  his  son, 
“  Orator  est,  Marce  fili,  vir  bonus  dicendi  peritus,” 1 
thus  putting  the  ethical  stamp  of  the  man  in  the 
first  place ;  and  his  “  rem  tene,  verba  sequentur  ”  is  a 
valuable  bit  of  advice  for  all  learners  and  teachers 
of  literature.  But  more  and  more  the  end  of  all 
education  had  come  to  be  the  art  of  oratory,  and 
particularly  the  art  as  exercised  in  the  courts  of  law, 
where  in  Cicero’s  time  neither  truth  nor  fact  was 
supreme,  and  where  the  first  thing  required  was  to  be 
a  clever  speaker, — a  vir  bonus  by  all  means  if  you 
were  so  disposed.  But  to  this  we  shall  return 
directly. 

In  such  schools,  if  he  were  not  educated  at  home, 
the  boy  remained  till  he  was  invested  with  the  toga 
virilis,  or  pura.  In  the  late  Republic  this  usually 
took  place  between  the  fourteenth  and  seventeenth 
years ; 2  thus  the  two  young  Ciceros  seem  both  to 
have  been  sixteen  when  they  received  the  toga 
virilis,  while  Octavian  and  Virgil  were  just  fifteen, 

1  H.  Jordan,  M.  Catonis  praeter  librum  de  re  rustica  quae  extant,  p.  80. 

2  Full  information  on  this  point  will  be  found  in  Marquardt,  Privatleben, 
p.  131  foil. 


192 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


and  the  son  of  Antony  only  fourteen.  In  former 
times  it  seems  probable  that  the  boy  remained 
“  praetextatus  ”  till  he  was  seventeen,  the  age  at 
which  he  was  legally  capable  of  military  service,  and 
that  he  went  straight  from  the  home  to  the  levy ; 1 
in  case  of  severe  military  pressure,  or  if  he  wished 
it  himself,  he  might  begin  his  first  military  exercises 
and  even  his  active  service,  in  the  praetexta.  But 
as  in  so  many  other  ways,  so  here  the  life  of  the 
city  brought  about  a  change ;  in  a  city  boys  are 
apt  to  develop  more  rapidly  in  intelligence  if  not  in 
body,  and  as  the  toga  virilis  was  the  mark  of  legal 
qualification  as  a  man,  they  might  be  of  more  use 
to  the  family  in  the  absence  of  the  father  if  invested 
with  it  somewhat  earlier  than  had  been  the  primi¬ 
tive  custom.  But  there  was  no  hard  and  fast  rule ; 
boys  develop  with  much  variation  both  mentally 
and  physically,  and,  like  the  Eton  collar  of  our  own 
schoolboys,  the  toga  of  childhood  might  be  retained 
or  dropped  entirely  at  the  discretion  of  the  parents. 

There  is,  however,  a  great  difference  in  the  two 
cases  in  regard  to  the  assumption  of  the  manly  dress. 
With  us  it  does  not  mean  independence  ;  as  a  rule 
the  boy  remains  at  school  for  a  year  or  two  at  least 
under  strict  discipline.  At  Rome  it  meant,  on  the 
contrary,  that  he  was  “  of  age,”  and  in  the  eye  of 
the  law  a  man,  capable  of  looking  after  his  own 
education  and  of  holding  property.  This  was  a 


1  See  my  Roman  Festivals,  p.  56.  The  Liberalia  (March  17)  was  the 
usual  day  for  the  change,  and  a  convenient  one  for  the  enrolment  of  tirones. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  193 

survival  from  the  time  when  at  the  age  of  puberty 
the  boy,  as  among  all  primitive  peoples,  was 
solemnly  received  into  the  body  of  citizens  and 
warriors ;  and  the  solemnity  of  the  Roman  ceremony 
fully  attests  this.  After  a  sacrifice  in  the  house, 
and  the  dedication  of  his  boyish  toga  and  bulla  to 
the  Lar  familiaris,  he  was  invested  with  the  plain 
toga  of  manhood  (libera,  pura),  and  conducted  by 
his  father  or  guardian,  accompanied  (in  characteristic 
Roman  fashion,  see  below,  p.  271)  by  friends  and 
relations,  to  the  Forum,  and  probably  also  to  the 
tabularium  under  the  Capitol,  where  his  name  was 
entered  in  the  list  of  full  citizens.1 

With  the  new  arrangement,  under  which  boys 
might  become  legally  men  at  an  earlier  age  than  in 
the  old  days,  it  is  obvious  that  there  must  often 
have  been  an  interval  before  they  were  physically 
or  mentally  qualified  for  a  profession.  As  the  sole 
civil  profession  to  which  boys  of  high  family  would 
aspire  was  that  of  the  bar,  a  father  would  send  his 
son  during  that  interval  to  a  distinguished  advocate 
to  be  taken  as  a  pupil.  Cicero  himself  was  thus 
apprenticed  to  Mucius  Scaevola  the  augur :  and  in 
the  same  way  the  young  Caelius,  as  soon  as  he  had 
taken  his  toga  virilis,  was  brought  by  his  father  to 
Cicero.  The  relation  between  the  youth  and  his 
preceptor  was  not  unlike  that  of  the  contubernium 
in  military  life,  in  which  the  general  to  whom  a  lad 

1  See  the  very  interesting  note  (11)  in  Marq.  p.  123,  as  to  the  enrolment 
in  municipal  towns. 


O 


194 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


was  committed  was  supposed  to  be  responsible  for 
bis  welfare  and  conduct  as  well  as  for  bis  education 
in  tbe  art  of  war :  thus  Cicero  says  of  Caelius 1  that 
at  that  period  of  bis  life  no  one  ever  saw  bim 
“  except  witli  bis  father  or  with  me,  or  in  the  A^ery 
wTell- conducted  house  of  M.  Crassus”  (who  shared 
with  Cicero  in  the  guardianship).  “  Fuit  assiduus 
mecum,”  he  says  a  little  farther  on.  This  kind  of 
pupilage  was  called  the  tirocinium  fori,  in  which  a 
lad  should  be  pursuing  his  studies  for  the  legal 
profession,  and  also  his  bodily  exercises  in  the 
Campus  Martius,  so  that  he  might  be  ready  to  ser\Te 
in  the  army  for  the  single  campaign  which  was 
still  desirable  if  not  absolutely  necessary.  "When 
he  had  made  his  first  speech  in  a  court  of  law,  he 
was  said  tirocinium  ponere ,2  and  if  it  were  a  success, 
he  might  devote  himself  more  particularly  hence¬ 
forward  to  the  art  and  practice  of  oratory.  No  doubt 
all  really  ambitious  young  men,  who  aimed  at  high 
office  and  an  eventual  provincial  government,  would, 
like  Caesar,  endeavour  to  qualify  themselves  for  the 
army  as  well  as  the  Forum.  Cicero,  howe\^er,  whose 
instincts  were  not  military,  served  only  in  one 
campaign,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  and  apparently 
he  advised  Caelius  to  do  no  more  than  this.  Caelius 
served  under  Q.  Pompeius  proconsul  of  Africa,  to 
whom  he  was  attached  as  contubernalis,  choosing 
this  province  because  his  father  had  estates  there.8 


1  Pro  Caelio,  4.  9. 


3  Pro  Caelio,  30.  72. 


2  Livy  xlv.  37.  3. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  195 

It  was  only  on  his  return  with  a  good  character 
from  Pompeius  that  he  proceeded  to  exhibit  his 
skill  as  an  orator  by  accusing  some  distinguished 
person — in  this  case  the  Antonius  who  was  after¬ 
wards  consul  with  Cicero.1 

To  attain  the  skill  in  oratory  which  would  enable 
the  pupil  to  make  a  successful  appearance  in  the 
Forum,  he  must  have  gone  through  an  elaborate 
training  in  the  art  of  rhetoric.  Cicero  does  not  tell 
us  whether  he  himself  gave  Caelius  lessons  in  rhetoric, 
or  whether  he  sent  him  to  a  professional  teacher ; 
he  had  himself  written  a  treatise  on  a  part  of  the 
subject — the  de  Inventione  of  80  b.c.,  the  earliest  of 
all  his  prose  works — and  was  therefore  quite  able 
to  give  the  necessary  instruction  if  he  found  time 
to  do  so.  It  is  not  the  object  of  this  chapter  to 
explain  the  meaning  of  rhetoric  as  the  Graeco-Roman 
world  then  understood  it,  or  the  theory  of  a  rhetorical 
education ;  for  this  the  reader  must  be  referred  to 
Professor  Wilkins’  little  book,2  or,  better  still,  to  the 
main  source  of  our  knowledge,  the  Institutio  Oratoris 
of  Quintilian.  Something  may,  however,  be  said  here 
of  the  view  taken  of  a  rhetorical  training  by  Cicero 
himself,  very  clearly  expressed  in  the  exordium  of  the 
treatise  just  mentioned,  and  often  more  or  less  directly 
reiterated  in  his  later  and  more  mature  works  on 
oratory. 

“  After  much  meditation,”  he  says,  “  I  have  been 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  wisdom  without  eloquence 

1  Rfo  Caelio,  31.  74. 


2  Roman  Education,  ch.  v. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


196 

is  of  little  use  to  a  state,  while  eloquence  without 
wisdom  is  often  positively  harmful,  and  never  of  any 
value.  Thus  if  a  man,  abandoning  the  study  of 
reason  and  duty,  which  is  always  perfectly  straight 
and  honourable,  spends  his  whole  time  in  the  practice 
of  speaking,  he  is  being  brought  up  to  be  a  hindrance 
to  his  own  development,  and  a  dangerous  citizen.” 
This  reminds  us  of  Cato’s  saying  that  an  orator  is 
“  vir  bonus  dicendi  peritus.”  Less  strongly  ex¬ 
pressed,  the  same  view  is  also  found  in  the  exordium 
of  another  and  more  mature  treatise  on  rhetoric,  by 
an  author  whose  name  is  unknown,  written  a  year 
or  two  before  that  of  Cicero  :  “  Non  enim  parum 
in  se  fructus  habet  copia  dicendi  et  commoditas 
orationis,  si  recta  intelligentia  et  definita  animi 
moderatione  gubernetur.” 1  We  may  assume  that 
in  Cicero’s  early  years  the  best  men  felt  that  the 
rhetorical  art,  if  it  were  to  be  of  real  value  to  the 
individual  and  the  state,  must  be  used  with  discre¬ 
tion,  and  accompanied  by  high  aims  and  upright 
conduct. 

Yet  within  a  generation  of  the  date  when  these 
wise  words  were  written,  the  letters  of  Caelius  show 
us  that  the  art  was  used  utterly  without  discretion, 
and  to  the  detriment  both  of  state  and  individual. 
The  high  ideal  of  culture  and  conduct  had  been  lost 
in  the  actual  practice  of  oratory,  in  a  degenerate  age, 
full  of  petty  ambitions  and  animosities.  We  ourselves 

1  Rhetor ica  ad  Hercnnium,  init.  The  date  of  this  work  was  about  82  b.c. 
See  a  paper  by  the  author  in  Journal  of  Philology,  x.  197. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  197 

know  only  too  well  how  a  thing  good  in  itself  as 
a  means  is  apt  to  lose  its  value  if  raised  into  the 
place  of  an  end how  the  young  mind  is  apt  to 
elevate  cricket,  football,  golf,  into  the  main  object 
of  all  human  activity.  So  it  was  with  rhetoric  ;  it 
was  the  indispensable  acquirement  to  enable  a  man 
to  enjoy  thoroughly  the  game  in  the  Forum,  and 
thus  in  education  it  became  the  staple  commodity. 
The  actual  process  of  acquiring  it  was  no  doubt  an 
excellent  intellectual  exercise, — the  learning  rules  of 
composition,  the  exercises  in  applying  these  rules,  i.e. 
the  writing  of  themes  or  essays  (proposita,  communes 
loci),  in  which  the  pupil  had  “  to  find  and  arrange  his 
own  facts,”  1  and  then  the  declamatio,  or  exercise  in 
actual  speaking  on  a  given  subject,  which  in  Cicero’s 
day  was  called  causa,  and  was  later  known  as  contro¬ 
versial  Such  practice  must  have  brought  out  much 
talent  and  ingenuity,  like  that  of  our  own  debating 
societies  at  school  and  college.  But  there  were  two 
great  defects  in  it.  First,  as  Professor  Wilkins  points 
out,  the  subjects  of  declamation  were  too  often  out  of 
all  relation  to  real  life,  e.g.  taken  from  the  Greek 
mythology ;  or  if  less  barren  than  usual,  were  far 
more  commonplace  and  flat  than  those  of  our  debating 
societies.  To  harangue  on  the  question  whether  the 
life  of  a  lawyer  or  a  soldier  is  the  best,  is  hardly  so 
inspiring  as  to  debate  a  question  of  the  day  about 
Ireland  or  India,  which  educates  in  living  fact  as  well 

1  EL  Nettleship,  Lectures,  etc.,  p.  Ill ;  Wilkins,  p.  85  ;  Quintil.  xii.  2. 
a  Wilkins,  l.c. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


198 

as  in  the  rules  of  the  orator’s  art.  Secondly,  the 
whole  aim  and  object  of  this  “  finishing  ”  portion  of  a 
boy’s  education  was  a  false  one.  Even  the  excellent 
Quintilian,  the  best  of  all  Roman  teachers,  believed 
that  the  statesman  (civilis  vir)  and  the  orator  are 
identical :  that  the  statesman  must  be  vir  bonus 
because  the  vir  bonus  makes  the  best  orator ;  that 
he  should  be  sapiens  for  the  same  reason.1  And  the 
object  of  oratory  is  “  id  agere,  ut  iudici  quae  proposita 
fuerint,  vera  et  honesta  videantur  ” : 2  i.e.  the  object 
is  not  truth,  but  persuasion.  We  might  get  an  idea 
of  how  such  a  training  would  fail  in  forming  char- 
acter,  if  we  could  imagine  all  our  liberal  education 
subordinated  to  the  practice  of  journalism.  But 
fortunately  for  us,  in  this  scientific  age,  words  and  the 
use  of  words  no  longer  serve  as  the  basis  of  education 
or  as  the  chief  nurture  of  young  life.  We  need  to 
see  facts,  to  understand  causes,  to  distinguish  objective 
truth  from  truth  reflected  in  books.  But  the  perfect 
education  must  be  a  skilful  mingling  of  the  two 
methods ;  and  it  may  be  as  well  to  take  care  that  we 
do  not  lose  contact  with  the  best  thoughts  of  the 
best  men,  because  they  are  contained  in  the  literature 
we  show  some  signs  of  neglecting.  We  may  say  of 
science  what  Cicero  said  of  rhetoric,  that  it  cannot 
do  without  sapientia. 

Of  schools  of  philosophy  I  have  already  said 
something  in  the  last  chapter,  and  as  the  study  of 

1  Quintil.  i.  4.  5  ;  xii.  1.  1  ;  xii.  2  and  7. 

*  lb.  xii.  1.  11. 


VI  EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  199 

philosophy  was  hardly  a  part  of  the  regular  curriculum 
of  education  properly  so  called,  I  shall  pass  it  over 
here.  The  philosopher  was  usually  to  be  found  in 
wealthy  houses,  and  if  he  were  a  wholesome  person, 
and  not  a  Philodemus,  he  might  assuredly  exercise  a 
good  influence  on  a  young  man.  Or  a  youth  might 
go  to  Athens  or  Rhodes  or  to  some  other  Greek  city, 
to  attend  the  lectures  of  some  famous  professor. 
Cicero  heard  Phaedrus  the  Epicurean  at  Rome  and 
then  Philo  the  Academician,  who  had  a  lasting 
influence  on  his  pupil,  and  then,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
seven,  went  to  Greece  for  two  years,  studying  at 
Athens,  Rhodes,  and  elsewhere.  Caesar  also  went  to 
Rhodes,  and  he  and  Cicero  both  attended  the  lectures 
of  Molo  in  rhetoric,  in  which  study,  as  well  as  in 
philosophy,  lectures  were  to  be  heard  in  all  the  great 
Greek  cities.1  Cicero  sent  his  own  son  to  “  the 
University  in  Athens  ”  at  the  age  of  twenty,  giving 
him  an  ample  allowance  and  doubtless  much  good 
advice.  The  young  man  soon  outran  his  allowance 
and  got  into  debt ;  the  good  advice  he  seems  to 
have  failed  to  utilise,  and  in  fact  gave  his  father 
considerable  anxiety. 

The  following  letter,  which  seems  to  show  that 
a  youth  who  had  excellent  opportunities  might  still 
be  lacking  in  principle  and  self-control,  is  the  only  one 
which  survives  of  the  letters  of  undergraduates  of 
that  day.  It  was  written  by  the  young  Cicero,  after 
he  had  repented  and  undertaken  to  reform,  not  to 

1  Plut.  Cic.  4  ;  Coes.  3. 


200 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


his  father  himself,  but  to  the  faithful  friend  and 
freedman  of  his  father,  Tiro,  who  afterwards  edited 
the  collection  of  letters  in  which  he  inserted  it.1  It 
is  on  the  whole  a  pleasing  letter,  and  seems  to  show 
real  affection  for  Tiro,  who  had  known  the  writer 
from  his  infancy.  It  is  a  little  odd  in  the  choice  of 
words,  perhaps  a  trifle  rhetorical.  The  reader  shall 
be  left  to  decide  for  himself  whether  it  is  perfectly 
straight  and  genuine.  In  any  case  it  may  aptly 
conclude  this  chapter. 

“  I  had  been  anxiously  expecting  letter-carriers 
day  after  day,  when  at  last  they  arrived  forty-six 
days  after  they  left  you.  Their  arrival  was  most 
welcome  to  me.  I  took  the  greatest  possible  pleasure 
in  the  letter  of  the  kindest  and  best  beloved  of  fathers, 
but  your  own  delightful  letter  put  the  finishing  touch 
to  my  joy.  So  I  no  longer  repent  of  dropping  letter¬ 
writing  fora  time,  but  am  rather  glad  I  did  so,  for 
my  silence  has  brought  me  a  great  reward  in  your 
kindness.  I  am  very  glad  indeed  that  you  accepted 
my  excuse  without  hesitation. 

“I  am  sure,  my  dearest  Tiro,  that  the  reports  about 
me  which  reach  you  answer  your  best  wishes  and 
hopes.  I  will  make  them  good,  and  I  will  do  my 
best  that  this  beginning  of  a  good  report  about  me 
may  daily  be  repeated.  So  you  may  with  perfect 
confidence  fulfil  your  promise  of  being  the  trumpeter 
(buccinator)  of  my  reputation.  For  the  errors  of  my 
youth  have  caused  me  so  much  remorse  and  suffering, 

1  ad  Fam.  xvi.  21.  The  translation  is  based  on  Mr.  Shuckburgh’s. 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  201 


that  it  is  not  only  my  heart  that  shrinks  from  what 
I  did — my  very  ears  abhor  the  mention  of  it.  I 
know  for  a  fact  that  you  have  shared  my  trouble  and 
sorrow,  and  I  don’t  wonder ;  you  always  wished  me 
to  do  well  not  only  for  my  sake  but  for  your  own. 
So  as  I  have  been  the  means  of  giving  you  pain,  I 
will  now  take  care  that  you  shall  feel  double  joy  on 
my  account. 

“  Let  me  tell  you  that  my  attachment  to  Cratippus 
is  that  of  a  son  rather  than  a  pupil :  I  enjoy  his 
lectures,  but  I  am  especially  charmed  by  his  delight¬ 
ful  manners.  I  spend  whole  days  with  him,  and 
often  part  of  the  night,  for  I  get  him  to  dine  with 
me  as  often  as  I  can.  We  have  grown  so  intimate 
that  he  often  drops  in  upon  us  unexpectedly  while 
we  are  at  dinner,  lays  aside  the  stiff  air  of  a 
philosopher,  and  joins  in  our  jests  with  the  greatest 
good  will.  He  is  such  a  man,  so  delightful,  so  dis¬ 
tinguished,  that  you  ought  to  make  his  acquaint¬ 
ance  as  soon  as  ever  you  can.  As  for  Bruttius,  I 
never  let  him  leave  me.  Fie  is  a  man  of  strict  and 
moral  life,  as  well  as  being  the  most  delightful 
company.  Surely  it  is  not  necessary  that  in  our 
daily  literary  studies  there  should  never  be  any  fun  at 
all.  I  have  taken  a  lodging  close  to  him,  and  as  far  as 
I  can  with  my  pittance  I  subsidise  his  narrow  means. 
I  have  also  begun  practising  declamation  in  Greek 
with  Cassius ;  in  Latin  I  like  having  my  practice 
with  Bruttius.  My  intimate  friends  and  daily  com¬ 
pany  are  those  whom  Cratippus  brought  with  him 


202 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


from  Mitylene, — good  scholars,  of  whom  he  has  the 
highest  opinion.  I  also  see  a  great  deal  of  Epicrates, 
the  leading  man  at  Athens,  and  Leonides,  and  people 
of  that  sort.  So  now  you  know  how  I  am  going  on. 

“  You  say  something  in  your  letter  about  Gorgias. 
The  fact  is  that  I  found  him  very  useful  in  my  daily 
practice  of  declamation,  but  I  put  my  father’s  injunc¬ 
tions  before  everything  else,  and  he  had  written 
telling  me  to  give  up  Gorgias  at  once.  I  wouldn’t 
shilly-shally  about  it,  for  fear  my  making  a  fuss 
might  pub  some  suspicion  in  my  father’s  head. 
Moreover  it  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be 
offensive  for  me  to  express  an  opinion  on  a  decision 
of  my  father’s.  However,  your  interest  and  advice 
are  welcome  and  acceptable. 

“  Your  apology  for  want  of  time  I  readily  accept, 
for  I  know  how  busy  you  always  are.  I  am  very 
glad  you  have  bought  an  estate,  and  you  have 
my  best  wishes  for  the  success  of  your  purchase. 
Don’t  be  surprised  at  my  congratulations  coming 
at  this  point  in  my  letter,  for  it  wras  at  the  corre¬ 
sponding  point  in  yours  that  you  told  me  of  this. 
You  must  drop  your  city  manners  (urbanitates) ;  you 
are  a  ‘  rusticus  Romanus  !  ’  How  clearly  I  see  your 
dearest  face  before  me  at  this  moment !  I  seem  to 
see  you  buying  things  for  the  farm,  talking  to  your 
bailiff,  saving  the  seeds  at  dessert  in  your  cloak. 
But  as  to  the  matter  of  money,  I  am  sorry  I  was 
not  there  to  help  you.  Don’t  doubt,  my  dear  Tiro, 
about  my  helping  you  in  the  future,  if  fortune  will 


VI 


EDUCATION  OF  UPPER  CLASSES  203 

but  stand  by  me,  especially  as  I  know  that  this 
estate  has  been  bought  for  our  mutual  advantage. 
As  to  my  commissions  about  which  you  are  taking 
trouble,  many  thanks !  I  beg  you  to  send  me  a 
secretary  at  the  first  opportunity,  if  possible  a 
Greek  :  for  he  will  save  me  much  trouble  in  copying 
out  notes.  Above  all,  take  care  of  your  health,  that 
we  may  have  some  literary  talk  together  some  day. 
I  commend  Anteros  to  you.  Adieu." 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 

In  the  last  age  of  the  Republic  the  employment  of 
slave  labour  reached  its  high-water  mark  in  ancient 
history.1  We  have  already  met  with  evidence  of 
this  in  examining  the  life  of  the  upper  classes ;  in 
the  present  chapter  we  must  try  to  sketch,  first,  the 
conditions  under  which  it  was  possible  for  such  a 
vast  slave  system  to  arise  and  flourish,  and  secondly, 
the  economical  and  ethical  results  of  it  both  in  city 
and  country.  The  subject  is  indeed  far  too  large 
and  complicated  to  be  treated  in  a  single  short 
chapter,  but  our  object  throughout  this  book  is 
only  to  give  such  a  picture  of  society  in  general 
as  may  tempt  a  student  to  further  and  more  exact 
inquiry. 

We  have  seen  that  the  two  upper  classes  of 
society  were  engaged  in  business  of  various  kinds, 
and  especially  in  banking  and  carrying  out  public 
contracts,  or  in  the  work  of  government,  and  in 


1  See  Dcr  Rom.  Gutsbctrieb,  by  H.  Gummerus,  reprinted  from  Klio,  1906  : 
an  excellent  specimen  of  economic  research,  to  which  I  am  much  indebted 
in  this  chapter. — E.  Meyer,  Die  Sclaverei  im  Altertum,  p.  46. 

204 


chap,  vn  THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  205 

Italian  agriculture.  All  this  business,  public  and 
private,  called  for  a  vast  amount  of  labour,  and  in 
part,  of  skilled  labour ;  the  great  men  provided  the 
capital,  but  the  details  of  the  work,  as  it  had 
gradually  developed  since  the  war  with  Hannibal, 
created  a  demand  for  workmen  of  every  kind  such  as 
had  never  before  been  known  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
world.  Clerks,  accountants,  messengers,  as  well  as 
operatives,  were  wanted  both  by  the  Government  and 
by  private  capitalists.  In  the  households  of  the  rich 
the  great  increase  of  wealth  and  luxury  had  led  to  a 
constant  demand  for  helps  of  all  kinds,  each  with  a 
certain  amount  of  skill  in  his  own  particular  depart¬ 
ment  ;  and  on  the  estates  in  the  country,  which  were 
steadily  growing  bigger,  and  were  tending  to  be 
worked  more  and  more  on  capitalistic  lines,  labour, 
both  skilled  and  unskilled,  was  increasingly  required. 
Thus  the  demand  for  labour  was  abnormally  great, 
and  had  been  created  with  abnormal  rapidity,  and 
the  supply  could  not  possibly  be  provided  by  the 
free  population  alone.  The  lower  classes  of  city 
and  country  were  not  suited  to  the  work  wanted, 
either  by  capacity  or  inclination.  It  was  not  for 
a  free  Roman  to  be  at  the  beck  and  call  of  an 
employer,  like  the  clerks  and  underlings  of  to-day, 
or  to  act  as  servant  in  a  great  household ;  and  for 
a  great  part  of  the  necessary  work  he  was  not 
sufficiently  well  educated.  Far  less  was  it  possible 
for  him  to  work  on  the  great  cattle-runs.  And  the 
State  wanted  the  best  years  of  his  life  for  service  in 


206 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  army,  which,  as  has  been  well  remarked,  was  the 
real  industry  of  the  Roman  freeman.  But  luckily  in 
one  sense,  and  in  another  unluckily,  for  Rome,  there 
was  an  endless  supply  of  labour  to  be  had,  of  every 
quality  and  capacity,  for  the  very  same  abnormal 
circumstances  which  had  created  the  demand  also 
provided  the  supply.  The  great  wars  and  the  wealth 
accruing  from  them  in  various  ways  had  produced  a 
capitalist  class  in  need  of  labour,  and  also  created  a 
slave-market  on  a  scale  such  as  the  world  has  never 
known  before  or  since. 

Ever  since  the  time  of  Alexander  and  the  wars  of 
his  successors  with  each  other  and  their  neighbours, 
it  is  probable  that  the  supply  of  captives  sold  as 
slaves  had  been  increasing ;  and  in  the  second 
century  b.c.  the  little  island  of  Delos  had  come  to 
be  used  as  a  convenient  centre  for  the  slave  trade. 
Strabo  tells  us  in  a  well-known  passage  that  10,000 
slaves  might  be  sold  there  in  a  single  day.1  But 
Rome  herself  was  in  the  time  of  Cicero  the  great 
emporium  for  slaves ;  the  wars  which  were  most 
productive  of  prisoners  had  been  for  long  in  the 
centre  and  the  west  of  the  Mediterranean  basin.  All 
armies  sent  out  from  Rome  were  accompanied  by 
speculators  in  this  trade,  who  bought  the  captives 
as  they  were  put  up  to  auction  after  a  battle,  and 
then  undertook  the  transport  to  Rome  of  all  who 
were  suited  for  employment  in  Italy  or  were  not 
bought  up  in  the  province  which  was  the  seat  of  war. 

1  Strabo,  p.  668. 


VII  THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  207 

The  enormous  number  of  slaves  thus  made  avail¬ 
able,  even  if  we  make  allowance  for  the  uncertainty  of 
the  numbers  as  they  have  come  down  to  us,  surpasses 
all  belief ;  we  may  take  a  few  examples,  sufficient  to 
give  some  idea  of  a  practice  which  had  lasting  and 
lamentable  results  on  Roman  society. 

After  the  campaign  of  Pydna  and  the  overthrow 
of  the  Macedonian  kingdom,  Aemilius  Paullus,  one 
of  the  most  humane  of  Romans,  sold  into  slavery, 
under  orders  from  the  senate,  150,000  free  inhabit¬ 
ants  of  communities  in  Epirus  which  had  sided  with 
Perseus  in  the  war.1  After  the  war  with  the  Cimbri 
and  Teutones,  90,000  of  the  latter  and  60,000  of  the 
former  are  said  to  have  been  sold ; 2  and  though  the 
numbers  may  be  open  to  suspicion,  as  they  amount 
again  to  150,000,  the  fact  of  an  enormous  capture 
is  beyond  question.  Caesar,  like  Aemilius  Paullus 
one  of  the  most  humane  of  Romans,  tells  us  himself 
that  on  a  single  occasion,  the  capture  of  the  Aduatuci, 
he  sold  53,000  prisoners  on  the  spot.3  And  of 
course  every  war,  whether  great  or  small,  while  it 
diminished  the  free  population  by  slaughter,  pesti¬ 
lence,  or  capture,  added  to  the  number  of  slaves. 
Cicero  himself,  after  his  campaign  in  Cilicia  and 
the  capture  of  the  hill  stronghold  Pindonissus,  did 
of  course  as  all  other  commanders  did ;  we  catch 
a  glimpse  of  the  process  in  a  letter  to  Atticus : 
“  mancipia  venibant  Saturnalibus  tertiis.” 4  It  is 

2  Livy,  Epit.  68. 

4  ad  Att.  v.  20.  5. 


1  Livy  xlv.  34. 

*  Caesar,  B.G.  ii.  33. 


208 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  we  should  be 
getting  our  historical  perspective  quite  wrong  if  we 
allowed  ourselves  to  expect  in  these  cultured  Roman 
generals  any  sign  of  compassion  for  their  victims ; 
it  was  a  part  of  their  mental  inheritance  to  look  on 
men  who  had  surrendered  as  simply  booty,  the 
property  of  the  victors ;  Roman  captives  would 
meet  with  the  same  fate,  and  even  for  them  little 
pity  was  ever  felt.  When  Caesar  in  49  within  a 
few  months  dismissed  two  surrendered  armies  of 
Roman  soldiers,  once  at  Corfinium  and  again  in 
Spain,  he  was  doubtless  acting  from  motives  of 
policy,  but  the  enslavement  of  Roman  citizens  by 
their  fellows  would,  we  may  hope,  have  been  re¬ 
pugnant  to  him,  if  not  to  his  own  soldiers.1 

War  then  was  the  principal  source  of  the  supply 
of  slaves,  but  it  was  not  the  only  one.  When  a 
slave-trade  is  in  full  swing,  it  will  be  fostered  in  all 
possible  way3.  Brigandage  and  kidnapping  were 
rife  all  over  the  Empire  and  in  the  countries  beyond 
its  borders  in  the  disturbed  times  with  which  we 
are  dealing.  The  pirates  of  Cilicia,  until  they  were 
suppressed  by  Pompeius  in  66,  swarmed  all  over  the 
Mediterranean,  and  snapped  up  victims  by  raids 
even  on  the  coasts  of  Italy,  selling  them  in  the 
market  at  Delos  without  hindrance.  Cicero,  in  his 

1  Wallon  (Hist,  de  I'Esclavage,  ii.  p.  38)  has  noted  that  Virgil  alone  shows 
a  feeling  of  tenderness  for  the  lot  of  the  captive,  quoting  Aen.  iii.  320  foil, 
(the  speech  of  Andromache) :  but  this  was  for  the  fate  of  a  princess,  and  a 
mythical  princess.  No  Latin  poet  of  that  age  shows  any  real  sympathy 
with  captives  or  with  slaves. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 


209 


speech  in  support  of  the  appointment  of  Pompey, 
mentions  that  well-born  children  had  been  carried 
off  from  Misenum  under  the  very  eyes  of  a  Roman 
praetor.1  Caesar  himself  was  taken  by  them  when 
a  young  man,  and  only  escaped  with  difficulty.  In 
Italy  itself,  where  there  was  no  police  protection 
until  Augustus  took  the  matter  in  hand,  kidnapping 
was  by  no  means  unknown  ;  the  grassatores,  as  they 
were  called,  often  slaves  escaped  from  the  prisons 
of  the  great  estates,  haunted  the  public  roads,  and 
many  a  traveller  disappeared  in  this  way  and  passed 
the  rest  of  his  life  in  a  slave -prison. 2  Varro,  in 
describing  the  sort  of  slaves  best  suited  for  work  on 
the  great  sheep-runs,  says  that  they  should  be  such 
as  are  strong  enough  to  defend  the  flocks  from  wild 
beasts  and  brigands — the  latter  doubtless  quite  as 
ready  to  seize  human  beings  as  sheep  and  cattle. 
And  slave-merchants  seem  to  have  been  constantly 
carrying  on  their  trade  in  regions  where  no  war  was 
going  on,  and  where  desirable  slaves  could  be  pro¬ 
cured  ;  the  kingdoms  of  Asia  Minor  were  ransacked 
by  them,  and  when  Marius  asked  Nicomedes  king 
of  Bithynia  for  soldiers  during  the  struggle  with  the 
Cimbri,  the  answer  he  got  was  that  there  were  none 
to  send — the  slave-dealers  had  been  at  work  there.3 
Every  one  will  remember  the  line  of  Horace  in 

1  Cic.  pro  lege  Manilla  12.  23.  Plutarch,  in  his  Life  of  Pompey  24,  adds 
that  Romans  of  good  standing  would  join  in  the  pirates’  business  in  order 
to  make  profit  in  this  scandalous  way. 

2  Suet.  Aug.  32,  of  the  period  before  Augustus. 

3  Varro,  R.R.  ii.  10  ;  Diodorus  xxzvi.  3.  1. 

P 


210 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


which  he  calls  one  of  these  wretches  a  “  king  of 
Cappadocia.”  1 

There  were  two  other  sources  of  the  slave  supply, 
of  which  however  little  need  be  said  here,  as  the 
contribution  they  made  was  comparatively  small. 
First,  slaves  were  bred  from  slaves,  and  on  rural 
estates  this  was  frequently  done  as  a  matter  of 
business.2  Varro  recommends  the  practice  in  the 
large  sheep  -  farms,3  under  certain  conditions ;  and 
some  well-known  lines  of  Horace  suggest  that  on 
smaller  farms,  where  a  better  class  of  slaves  would 
be  required,  these  home-bred  ones  were  looked  on 
as  the  mark  of  a  rich  house,  “  ditis  examen  domus.”  4 
Secondly,  a  certain  number  of  slaves  had  become 
such  under  the  law  of  debt.  This  was  a  common 
source  of  slavery  in  the  early  periods  of  Roman 
history,  but  in  Cicero’s  day  we  cannot  speak  of  it 
with  confidence.  We  have  noticed  the  cry  of  the 
distressed  freemen  of  the  city  in  the  conspiracy  of 
Catiline,  which  looks  as  though  the  old  law  were 
still  put  in  force ;  and  in  the  country  there  are  signs 
that  small  owners  who  had  borrowed  from  large 
ones  were  in  Yarro’s  time  in  some  modified  condition 
of  slavery,5  surrendering  their  labour  in  lieu  of  pay- 

1  Hor.  Epist.  i.  6.  39  : — 

“  Mancipiis  locuples  eget  aeris  Cappadocum  rex: 

Ne  fueris  hie  tu.” 

5  Varro,  R.K.  i.  17.  3  lb.  2.  10.  3. 

4  Hor.  Epode  2.  65.  Cp.  Tibull.  ii.  1.  25  “  turbaque  vemarum,  saturi 
bona  signa  colonL” 

5  See  Gummerus,  op.  cit.  p.  63,  who  considers  the  obaeratus  of  Varro  as 
the  equivalent  of  the  addiclus  of  the  Roman  law  of  debt. 


YII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 


2  1 1 


ment.  But  all  these  internal  sources  of  slavery  are 
as  nothing  compared  with  the  supply  created  by  war 
and  the  slave-trade. 

This  supply  being  thus  practically  unlimited, 
prices  ran  comparatively  low,  and  no  Roman  of 
any  considerable  means  at  all  need  be,  or  was, 
entirely  without  slaves.  He  had  only  to  go,  or  to 
send  his  agent,  to  one  of  the  city  slave -markets, 
such  as  the  temple  of  Castor,1  where  the  slave- 
agents  (mangones)  exhibited  their  “  goods  ”  under 
the  supervision  of  the  aediles ;  there  he  could  pick 
out  exactly  the  kind  of  slave  he  wanted  at  any 
price  from  the  equivalent  of  £10  upwards.  The 
unfortunate  human  being  was  exhibited  exactly 
as  horses  are  now,  and  could  be  stripped,  handled, 
trotted  about,  and  treated  with  every  kind  of  indignity, 
and  of  course  the  same  sort  of  trickery  went  on  in 
these  human  sales  as  is  familiar  to  all  horse-dealers 
of  the  present  day.2  The  buyer,  if  he  wanted  a 
valuable  article,  a  Greek,  for  example,  who  could  act 
as  secretary  or  librarian,  like  Cicero’s  beloved  Tiro, 
or  even  a  household  slave  with  a  special  character 
for  skill  in  cooking  or  other  specialised  work  of  a 
luxurious  family,  would  have  to  give  a  high  price ; 
even  as  long  ago  as  the  time  of  the  elder  Cato 
a  very  large  sum  might  be  given  for  a  single  choice 

1  See  the  well-known  description  of  the  Forum  in  Plautus’  Curculio,  iv.  1 : 
“pone  aedem  Castoris,  ibi  sunt  subito  quibu’  credas  male”  ;  Marq.  Privat- 
leben,  p.  168  ;  Wallon,  op.  cit.  eh.  ii. 

2  Gellius  iv.  2  gives  an  extract  from  the  edict  of  the  aediles  drawn  up 
with  the  object  of  counteracting  such  sharp  practice. 


212 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


slave,  and  Cato  as  censor  in  184  attempted  to  check 
such  high  prices  by  increasing  the  duties  payable 
on  the  sales.1  Towards  the  close  of  the  Republican 
period  we  have  little  explicit  evidence  of  prices ; 
Cicero  constantly  mentions  his  slaves,  but  not  their 
values.  Doubtless  for  fancy  articles  huge  prices 
might  be  demanded ;  Pliny  tells  us  that  Antony 
when  triumvir  bought  two  boys  as  twins  for  more 
than  £800  apiece,  who  were  no  doubt  intended 
for  handsome  pages,  perhaps  to  please  Cleopatra.2 
But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  ordinary  slaves 
capable  of  performing  only  menial  offices  in  town  or 
country  were  to  be  had  at  this  time  quite  cheap, 
and  the  number  in  the  city  alone  must  have  been 
very  great. 

It  is  unfortunately  quite  impossible  to  make  even 
a  probable  estimate  of  the  total  number  in  Rome  ; 
the  data  are  not  forthcoming.  Beloch3  remarks 
aptly  that  though  some  families  owned  hundreds  of 
slaves,  the  number  of  such  families  was  not  large, 
quoting  the  words  of  Philippus,  tribune  in  104  b.c., 
to  the  effect  that  there  were  not  more  than  two 
thousand  persons  of  any  substance  in  the  State.4 
The  great  majority  of  citizens  living  in  Rome  had, 
he  thinks,  no  slaves.  He  is  forced  to  take  as  a  basis 

1  Livy  xxxix.  44. 

2  JY.  II.  vii.  55.  This  story  affords  a  good  example  of  the  tricks  of  the 
trade  :  the  boys  were  not  twins,  and  came  from  different  countries,  though 
exactly  alike. 

3  BevSlkerung,  p.  403. 

4  Cic.  Off.  ii.  21.  73. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  213 


of  calculation  the  proportion  of  bond  to  free  in  the 
only  city  of  the  Empire  about  which  we  have  certain 
information  on  this  point ;  at  Pergamum  there  was 
one  slave  to  two  free  persons.1  Assuming  the  whole 
free  population  to  have  been  about  half  a  million  in 
the  time  of  Augustus,  or  rather  more,  including 
peregrini,  he  thus  arrives  at  a  slave  population  of 
something  like  280,000  ;  this  may  not  be  far  off  the 
mark,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  little 
more  than  a  guess. 

What  has  been  said  above  will  have  given  the 
reader  some  idea  of  the  conditions  of  life  which 
created  a  great  demand  for  labour  in  the  last  two 
centuries  b.c.,  and  of  the  circumstances  which  produced 
an  abundant  supply  of  unfree  labour  to  satisfy  that 
demand.  I  propose  now  to  treat  the  whole  question 
of  Roman  slavery  from  three  points  of  view, — the 
economic,  the  legal,  and  the  ethical.  In  other  words, 
we  have  to  ask :  (1)  how  the  abundance  of  slave  labour 
affected  the  social  economy  of  the  free  population ; 
(2)  what  was  the  position  of  the  slave  in  the  eye  of 
the  law,  as  regards  treatment  and  chance  of  manu¬ 
mission  ;  (3)  what  were  the  ethical  results  of  this 
great  slave  system,  both  on  the  slaves  themselves 
and  on  their  masters. 

1.  From  an  economical  point  of  view  the  most 
interesting  question  is  whether  slave  labour  seriously 
interfered  with  the  development  of  free  industry  ; 
and  unfortunately  this  question  is  an  extremely 

1  Galen  v.  p.  49,  ed.  Kuhn  ;  Galen  was  a  native  of  this  great  city. 


214 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


difficult  one  to  answer.  We  can  all  guess  easily  that 
the  opportunities  of  free  labour  must  have  been 
limited  by  the  presence  of  enormous  numbers  of 
slaves  ;  but  to  get  at  the  facts  is  another  matter.  In 
regard  to  rural  slavery  vve  have  some  evidence  to  go 
upon,  as  we  shall  see  directly,  and  this  has  of  late 
been  collected  and  utilised ;  but  as  regards  labour  in 
the  city  no  such  research  has  as  yet  been  made,1  and 
the  material  is  at  once  less  fruitful  and  more  difficult 
to  handle.  A  few  words  on  this  last  point  must 
suffice  here. 

We  have  seen  in  Chapter  II.  that  there  was  plenty 
of  employment  at  Rome  for  freemen.  Friedlander, 
than  whom  no  higher  authority  can  be  quoted  for  the 
social  life  of  the  city,  goes  so  far  as  to  assert  that 
even  under  the  early  Empire  a  freeman  could  always 
obtain  work  if  he  wished  for  it ; 2  and  even  if  we  take 
this  as  a  somewhat  exaggerated  statement,  it  may 
serve  to  keep  us  from  rushing  to  the  other  extreme 
and  picturing  a  population  of  idle  free  paupers.  In 
fact  we  are  bound  on  general  evidence  to  assume  for 
our  own  period  that  he  is  in  the  main  right ;  the 
poor  freeman  of  Rome  had  to  live  somehow,  and  the 
cheap  corn  which  he  enjoyed  was  not  given  him 
gratis  until  a  few  years  before  the  Republic  came  to 
an  end.3  How  did  he  get  the  money  to  pay  even 
the  sum  of  six  asses  and  a  third  for  a  modius  of 
corn,  or  to  pay  for  shelter  and  clothing,  which  were 

1  Dr.  Gummerus  promises  it.  2  Sittengcschichte,  i.,  ed.  5,  p.  264. 

3  Probably  by  Clodius  in  58. 


YU 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  215 

assuredly  not  to  be  bad  for  nothing?  We  know 
again,  that  the  gilds  of  trades  (see  above,  p.  45)  con¬ 
tinued  to  exist  in  the  last  century  of  the  Republic,1 
though  the  majority  had  to  be  suppressed  owing  to 
their  misuse  as  political  clubs.  Supposing  that  the 
members  of  these  collegia  were  small  employers  of 
labour,  it  is  reasonable  to  assume  that  the  labour 
they  employed  was  at  least  largely  free ;  for  the 
capital  needed  to  invest,  at  some  risk,  in  a  sufficient 
number  of  slaves,  who  would  have  to  be  housed  and 
fed,  and  whose  lives  would  be  uncertain  in  a  crowded 
and  unhealthy  city,  could  not,  we  must  suppose,  be 
easily  found  by  such  men.  Here  and  there,  no  doubt, 
we  find  traces  of  slave  labour  in  factories,  e.g.  as  far 
back  as  the  time  of  Plautus,  if  we  can  take  him  as 
writing  of  Rome  rather  than  translating  from  the 
Greek : 

An  te  ibi  vis  inter  istas  versarier 
Prosedas,  pistorum  arnicas,  reginas  alicarias, 

Miseras  scboeno  delibutas  servilicolas  sordidas  ?  * 

Poenulus,  265  foil 

But  on  the  whole,  we  may  with  all  due  caution,  in 
default  of  complete  investigation  of  the  question, 
assume  that  the  Roman  slaves  were  confined  for  the 
most  part  to  the  great  and  rich  families,  and  were 
not  used  by  them  to  any  great  extent  in  productive 

1  Asconius  ad  Cie.  pro  Cornel.,  ed.  Clark,  p.  75  ;  Waltzing,  Corporations 
prqfessionelles,  i.  p.  90  foil. 

*  Baking  as  a  trade  only  came  in,  as  we  saw,  in  174  ;  Plautus  died  in  184  ; 
some  doubt  is  thus  thrown  on  the  Roman  character  of  the  passage,  or  the 
allusion  may  not  be  to  a  public  bakery. 


2  l6 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


industry,  but  in  supplying  the  luxurious  needs  of  the 
household.1  In  all  probability  research  will  show 
that  free  labour  was  far  more  available  than  we  are 
apt  to  think.  We  hear  of  no  outbreak  of  feeling 
against  slave  labour,  which  might  suggest  a  rivalry 
between  the  two.  Slave  labour,  we  may  think,  had 
filled  a  gap,  created  by  abnormal  circumstances,  and 
did  not  oust  free  labour  entirely  ;  but  it  tended  con¬ 
stantly  to  cramp  it,  and  doubtless  started  notions  of 
work  in  general  which  helped  to  degrade  it.2  Those 
immense  familiae  urbanae,  of  which  the  historian  of 
slavery  has  given  a  detailed  account  in  his  second 
volume,3  belong  rather  to  the  early  Empire  than  to  the 
last  years  of  the  Republic — the  evidence  for  them  is 
drawn  chiefly  from  Seneca,  Juvenal,  Tacitus,  Martial, 
etc. ;  but  such  evidence  as  we  have  for  the  age  of 
Cicero  seems  to  suggest  that  the  vast  palaces  of 
the  capitalists,  which  Sallust  describes  as  being 
almost  like  cities,4  were  already  beginning  to  be 
served  by  a  familia  urbana  which  rendered  them 
almost  independent  of  any  aid  from  without  by 
labour  or  purchase.  Not  only  the  ordinary  domestic 
helpers  of  all  kinds,  but  copyists,  librarians,  paedagogi 
as  tutors  for  the  children,  and  even  doctors  might 
all  be  found  in  such  households  in  a  servile  condition, 

1  See  a  remarkable  passage  of  Athenaeus  (vi.  104)  quoted  by  Marquardt, 
Privatleben,  p.  156,  on  the  use  of  slaves  at  Rome  for  unproductive  labour. 

2  Sallust,  e.g.,  says  of  his  own  life  in  retirement  that  he  would  not  engage 
in  “agrum  colendo  aut  venando,  servilibus  officiis.” — Catil.  4. 

3  Wallon,  Hist,  de  V Esclavage,  vol.  ii.  ch.  iii. 

*  Sail.  Catil.  12. 


vn  THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  217 

without  reckoning  the  great  numbers  who  seem  to 
have  been  always  available  as  escorts  when  the  great 
man  was  travelling  in  Italy  or  in  the  provinces. 
Valerius  Maximus  tells  us1  that  Cato  the  censor  as 
proconsul  of  Spain  took  only  three  slaves  with  him, 
and  that  his  descendant  Cato  of  Utica  during  the 
Civil  Wars  had  twelve  ;  as  both  these  men  were 
extremely  frugal,  we  can  form  an  idea  from  this 
passage  both  of  the  increasing  supply  of  slaves  and  of 
the  far  larger  escorts  which  accompanied  the  ordinary 
wealthy  traveller. 

As  regards  the  familia  rustica,  the  working 
population  of  the  farm,  the  evidence  is  much  more 
definite.  The  old  Roman  farm,  in  which  the  pater¬ 
familias  lived  with  his  wife,  children,  and  slaves,  was, 
no  doubt,  like  the  old  English  holding  in  a  manor, 
for  the  most  part  self-sufficing,  doing  little  in  the  way 
of  sale  or  purchase,  and  worked  by  all  the  members 
of  the  familia,  bond  and  free.  In  the  middle  of  the 
second  century  b.c.,  when  Cato  wrote  his  treatise  on 
husbandry,  we  find  that  a  change  has  taken  place ; 
the  master  can  only  pay  the  farm  an  occasional  visit, 
to  see  that  it  is  being  properly  managed  by  the  slave 
steward2  (vilicus),  and  the  business  is  being  run 
upon  capitalistic  lines,  i.e.  with  a  view  to  realising 
the  utmost  possible  profit  from  it  by  the  sale  of  its 
products.  Thus  Cato  is  most  particular  in  urging 

1  iv.  3.  11  and  12.  Plutarch  says  that  as  military  tribune  Cato  the 
younger  had  fifteen  slaves  with  him. — Cato  minor  9. 

2  Cato,  R.R.  2.  1. 


21  8 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


that  a  farm  should  be  so  placed  as  to  have  easy 
communication  with  market  towns,  where  the  wine 
and  oil  could  be  sold,  which  were  the  chief  products, 
and  where  various  necessaries  could  be  bought  cheap, 
such  as  pottery  and  metal- work  of  all  kinds.1  Thus 
the  farm  does  not  entirely  depend  on  the  labour  of 
its  own  familia  ;  nevertheless  it  rests  still  upon  an 
economic  basis  of  slave  labour.  For  an  olivet um  of 
240  jugera  Cato  puts  the  necessary  hands  as  thirteen 
in  number,  all  noil-free  ;  for  a  vineyard  of  100  jugera 
at  sixteen  ;  and  these  figures  are  no  doubt  low,  if  we 
remember  his  character  for  parsimony  and  profit¬ 
making.2  Free  labour  was  to  be  had,  and  was 
occasionally  needed ;  at  the  very  outset  of  his  work 
Cato  (ch.  4)  insists  that  the  owner  should  be  a  good 
and  friendly  neighbour,  in  order  that  he  may  easily 
obtain,  not  only  voluntary  help,  but  hired  labourers 
(operarii).  These  were  needed  especially  at  harvest 
time,  when  extra  hands  were  wanted,  as  in  our  hop¬ 
gardens,  for  the  gathering  of  olives  and  for  the 
vintage.  Sometimes  the  work  was  let  out  to  a 
contractor,  and  he  gives  explicit  directions  (in 
chs.  144  and  145)  for  the  choice  of  these  and 
the  contracts  to  be  made  with  them ;  whether 
in  this  case  the  contractor  (redemptor)  used  eutirely 
free  or  slave  labour  does  not  appear  distinctly, 
but  it  seems  clear  that  a  proportion  at  least  was 

1  In  cli.  135  he  mentions  towns  where  many  other  objects  may  be  bought 
best  and  cheapest :  at  Rome,  e.g.,  clothing  and  rugs,  at  Cales  and  Minturnae 
farm-instruments  of  iron,  etc.  See  also  Gummerus,  op.  cit.  p.  36. 

2  R.R.  10  and  11. 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 


VII 


219 


free.1  What  the  free  labourers  did  at  other  times  of 
the  year,  whether  or  no  they  were  small  cultivators 
themselves,  Cato  does  not  tell  us. 

For  the  age  with  which  we  are  more  specially  con¬ 
cerned,  we  have  the  evidence  of  Varro’s  three  books 
on  husbandry,  written  in  his  old  age,  after  the  fall  of 
the  Republic.  Here  we  find  the  economic  condition 
of  the  farm  little  changed  since  the  time  of  Cato. 
The  permanent  labour  is  non-free,  but  in  spite  of  the 
vast  increase  in  the  servile  labour  available  in  Italy, 
there  is  still  a  considerable  employment  of  freemen 
at  certain  times,  on  all  farms  where  the  olive  and 
vine  were  the  chief  objects  of  culture.  In  the  17th 
chapter  of  his  first  book,  in  which  he  gives  interesting 
advice  for  the  purchase  of  suitable  slaves,  he  begins 
by  telling  us  that  all  land  is  cultivated  either  by 
slaves  or  freemen,  or  both  together,  and  the  free  are 
of  three  kinds, — either  small  holders  (pauperculi) 
with  their  children ;  or  labourers  who  live  by  wage 
(conducticii),  and  are  especially  needed  in  hay  harvest 
or  vintage ;  or  debtors  who  give  their  labour  as 
payment  for  what  they  owe  (obaerati).2  Varro  too, 
like  Cato,  recognises  the  necessity  of  purchasing 
many  things  which  cannot  well  be  manufactured  on 
a  farm  of  moderate  size,  and  thus  the  landowner  may 
in  this  way  also  have  been  indirectly  an  employer  of 

1  Assiduos  homines  quinquaginta  praebeto,  i.e.  the  contractor  :  ch.  144. 

2  See  the  discussion  of  this  word  in  Gummerus,  p.  62  foil.  Varro  defines 
them  as  those  “qui  suas  operas  in  servitutem  dant  pro  pecunia  quam 
debebant”  (de  Ling.  Lat.  vii.  105),  i.e.  they  give  their  labour  as  against 
servitude. 


220 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


free  labour ;  but  so  far  as  possible  the  farm  should 
supply  itself  with  the  materials  for  its  own  working,1 
for  this  gives  employment  to  the  slaves  throughout  the 
year, — and  they  should  never  be  allowed  to  be  idle.2 

Thus  it  is  abundantly  clear  that  even  in  the  time 
of  Cicero  there  was  a  certain  demand  for  free  labour 
in  the  ordinary  Italian  oliveyard  and  vineyard,  and 
that  the  necessary  supply  was  forthcoming,  though 
the  permanent  industrial  basis  was  non-free,  and  the 
tendency  was  to  use  slave-labour  more  exclusively. 
The  rule  that  the  slave  cannot  be  allowed  to  be 
unemployed  was  a  most  important  factor  in  the 
economical  development,  and  drove  the  landowner, 
who  never  seems  to  have  had  any  doubt  about  the 
comparative  cheapness  of  slave-labour,3  gradually  to 
make  his  farm  more  and  more  independent  of  all 
aid  from  outside.  In  the  work  of  Columella,  written 
towards  the  end  of  the  first  century  A.D.,  it  is  plain 
that  the  work  of  the  farm  is  carried  on  more 
exclusively  by  slave-labour  than  was  the  case  in 
the  last  twro  centuries  B.c.4 

To  this  not  unpleasant  picture  of  the  conditions 
of  Italian  agricultural  slavery  a  few  words  must  be 
added  about  the  great  pastoral  farms  of  Southern 

1  K.B.  i.  22. 

2  Cp.  Plut  Cato  the  Elder  21  ;  a  slave  must  be  at  work  when  he  is  not 
asleep. 

3  This  is  a  point  on  which  I  cannot  enter,  but  there  can  hardly  be  a 
doubt  that  in  the  long  run  free  labour  is  cheaper.  See  Cairnes,  Slave  Power 
in  America,  ch.  iii.  ;  Salvioli,  Le  Capitalisms,  p.  253  ;  Columella,  Praefatio. 

4  Gummerus,  p.  81.  At  the  same  time  the  small  cultivator  is  an  obvious 
fact  in  Columella,  cultivating  his  bit  of  land  without  working  for  others. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  221 


Italy.  If  a  man  invested  his  capital  in  a  com¬ 
paratively  small  estate  of  olives  and  vineyards,  such 
as  that  which  Cato  treats  of,  and  which  seems  to 
have  been  his  own ;  or  even  in  a  latifundium  of  the 
kind  which  Varro  more  vaguely  pictures,  containing 
also  parks  and  game  and  a  moderate  amount  of 
pasture,  he  would  need  slaves  mainly  of  a  certain 
degree  of  skill.  But  on  the  largest  areas  of  pasture, 
chiefly  in  the  hill  districts  of  Southern  Italy,  where 
there  was  little  cultivation  except  what  was  necessary 
for  the  consumption  of  the  slaves  themselves,  these 
were  the  roughest  and  wildest  type  of  bondsmen. 
The  work  was  that  of  the  American  ranche,  the  life 
harsh,  and  the  workmen  dangerous.  It  was  in  these 
districts  and  from  these  men  that  Spartacus  drew  the 
material  with  which  he  made  his  last  stand  against 
Roman  armies  in  72-71  B.c.  ;  and  it  was  in  this 
direction  that  Caelius  and  Milo  turned  in  48  B.c.  in 
quest  of  revolutionary  and  warlike  bands.  These 
roughs  could  even  be  used  as  galley-slaves  ;  more 
than  once  in  the  Commentaries  on  the  Civil  War 
Caesar  tells  us  that  his  opponents  drafted  them  into 
the  vessels  which  were  sent  to  relieve  the  siege  of 
Massilia.1  It  was  here  too,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Thurii,  that  a  bloody  fight  took  place  between  the 
slaves  of  two  adjoining  estates,  strong  men  of  courage, 
as  Cicero  describes  them,  of  which  we  learn  from  the 
fragments  of  his  lost  speech  pro  Tullio.  They  were 

1  For  Spartacus,  Appian,  B.C.  i.  116;  for  Caelius,  Caesar,  B.C.  iii.  22; 
and  cp.  B.  C.  i.  56. 


222 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


of  course  armed,  and  as  we  may  guess  from  Varro’s 
remarks  on  the  kind  of  slaves  suitable  for  shepherd¬ 
ing,1  this  was  usually  the  practice,  in  order  to  defend 
the  flocks  from  wild  beasts  and  robbers,  particularly 
when  they  were  driven  up  to  summer  pasture  (as 
they  still  are)  in  the  saltus  of  the  Apennines.  The 
needs  of  these  shepherds  would  be  small,  and  the 
latifundia  of  this  kind  were  probably  almost  self- 
sufficing,  no  free  labour  being  required.  After  their 
day’s  work  the  slaves  were  fed  and  locked  up  for  the 
night,  and  kept  in  fetters  if  necessary ; 2  they  were 
in  fact  simply  living  tools,  to  use  the  expression  of 
Aristotle,  and  the  economy  of  such  estates  was  as 
simple  as  that  of  a  workshop.  The  exclusion  of  free 
labour  is  here  complete  :  on  the  agricultural  estates 
it  was  approaching  a  completion  which  it  fortunately 
never  reached.  Had  it  reached  that  completion,  the 
economic  influence  of  slavery  would  have  been 
altogether  Dad ;  as  it  was,  the  introduction  of  slave- 
labour  on  a  large  scale  did  valuable  service  to  Italian 
agriculture  in  the  last  century  b.c.  by  contributing 
the  material  for  its  revival  at  a  time  when  the 
necessary  free  labour  could  not  have  been  found. 
However  lamentable  its  results  may  have  been  in  other 
ways,  especially  on  the  great  pastures,  the  economic 
history  of  Italy,  when  it  comes  to  be  written,  will  have 
to  give  it  credit  for  an  appreciable  amount  of  benefit. 

2.  The  legal  and  political  aspect  of  slavery.  A 
slave  was  in  the  eye  of  the  law  not  a  persona ,  but  a 


1  R.R.  ii.  10. 


2  Columella  i.  8. 


VII  THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  223 

res,  i.e.  he  had  no  rights  as  a  human  being,  could  not 
marry  or  hold  property,  but  was  himself  simply  a 
piece  of  property  which  could  be  conveyed  (res 
mancipi).1  During  the  Republican  period  the  law 
left  him  absolutely  at  the  disposal  of  his  master,  who 
had  the  power  of  life  and  death  (jus  vitae  necisque) 
over  him,  and  could  punish  him  with  chastisement 
and  bonds,  and  use  him  for  any  purpose  he  pleased, 
without  reference  to  any  higher  authority  than  his 
own.  This  was  the  legal  position  of  all  slaves  ;  but 
it  naturally  often  happened  that  those  who  were  men 
of  knowledge  or  skill,  as  secretaries,  for  example, 
librarians,  doctors,  or  even  as  body -servants,  were 
in  intimate  and  happy  relations  with  their  owners,2 
and  in  the  household  of  a  humane  man  no  well- 
conducted  slave  need  fear  bodily  degradation.  Cicero 
and  his  friend  Atticus  both  had  slaves  whom  they 
valued,  not  only  for  their  useful  service,  but  as 
friends.  Tiro,  who  edited  Cicero’s  letters  after  his 
death,  and  to  whom  we  therefore  owe  an  eternal 
debt  of  gratitude,  was  the  object  of  the  tenderest 
affection  on  the  part  of  his  owner,  and  the  letters 
addressed  to  him  by  the  latter  when  he  was  taken 
ill  at  Patrae  in  50  b.c.  are  among  the  most  touching 
writings  that  have  come  down  to  us  from  antiquity. 
“  I  miss  you,”  he  writes  in  one  of  them,3  “  yes,  but  I 

1  Gaius  ii.  15. 

2  For  examples  of  slaves’  devotion  to  their  masters,  Appian,  B.  C.  iv.  29  ; 
Seneca,  de  Benef.  iii.  25. 

3  ad  Fam.  xvi.  1 ;  read  also  the  charming  letters  which  follow.  Tiro 
was  manumitted  by  Cicero  at  an  unknown  date. 


224 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


also  love  you.  Love  prompts  the  wish  to  see  you  in 
good  health  :  the  other  motive  would  make  me  wish 
to  see  you  as  soon  as  possible, — and  the  former  one 
is  the  best.”  Atticus,  too,  had  his  Tiro,  Alexis, 
“  imago  Tironis,”  as  Cicero  calls  him  in  a  letter  to 
his  friend,1  and  many  others  who  were  engaged  in 
the  work  of  copying  and  transcribing  books,  which 
was  one  of  Atticus’  many  pursuits.  All  such  slaves 
would  sooner  or  later  be  manumitted,  i.e.  transmuted 
from  a  res  to  a  'persona ;  and  in  the  ease  with  which 
this  process  of  transmutation  could  be  effected  we 
have  the  one  redeeming  point  of  the  whole  system  of 
bondage.  According  to  the  oldest  and  most  efficient 
form  (vinclicta),  a  legal  ceremony  had  to  be  gone 
through  in  the  presence  of  a  praetor ;  but  the  praetor 
could  easily  be  found,  and  there  was  no  other  difficulty. 
This  was  the  form  usually  adopted  by  an  owner  wishing 
to  free  a  slave  in  his  own  lifetime  ;  but  great  numbers 
were  constantly  manumitted  more  irregularly,  or  by 
the  will  of  the  master  after  his  death.2 

Thus  the  leading  facts  in  the  legal  position  of  the 
Roman  slave  were  two  :  ( l )  he  was  absolutely  at  the 
disposal  of  his  owner,  the  law  never  interfering  to 
protect  him  ;  (2)  he  had  a  fair  prospect  of  manumis¬ 
sion  if  valuable  and  well-behaved,  and  if  manumitted 
he  of  course  became  a  Roman  citizen  (libertus  or 
libertinus)  with  full  civil  rights,3  remaining,  however, 

1  ad  Att.  xii.  10. 

2  See  the  article  “  Manumissio  ”  in  Did.  of  Antiquities. 

3  Only  in  exercising  the  jus  suffragii  he  was  limited  with  all  his  fellow 
libertini  to  one  of  the  four  city  tribes. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  225 

according  to  ancient  custom,  in  a  certain  position  of 
moral  subordination  to  his  late  master,  owing  him 
respect,  and  aid  if  necessary.  Let  us  apply  these 
two  leading  facts  to  the  conditions  of  Roman  life  as 
we  have  already  sketched  them.  We  shall  find  that 
they  have  political  results  of  no  small  importance. 

First,  we  must  try  to  realise  that  the  city  of 
Rome  contained  at  least  200,000  human  beings  over 
whom  the  State  had  no  direct  control  whatever. 
All  such  crimes,  serious  or  petty,  as  are  now  tried 
and  disposed  of  in  our  criminal  courts,  were  then, 
if  committed  by  a  slave,  punishable  only  by  the 
master ;  and  in  the  majority  of  cases,  if  the  familia 
were  a  large  one,  they  probably  never  reached  his 
ears.  The  jurisdiction  to  which  the  slave  was 
responsible  was  a  private  one,  like  that  of  the  great 
feudal  lord  of  the  Middle  Ages,  who  had  his  own 
prison  and  his  own  gallows.  The  political  result  was 
much  the  same  in  each  case.  Just  as  the  feudal  lord, 
with  his  private  jurisdiction  and  his  hosts  of  retainers, 
became  a  peril  to  good  government  and  national 
unity  until  he  was  brought  to  order  by  a  strong  king 
like  our  Henry  II.  or  Henry  VII.,  so  the  owner  of 
a  large  familia  of  many  hundreds  of  slaves  may 
almost  be  said  to  have  been  outside  of  the  State ; 
undoubtedly  he  became  a  serious  peril  to  the  good 
order  of  the  capital.  The  part  played  by  the 
slaves  in  the  political  disturbances  of  Cicero’s  time 
was  no  mean  one.  One  or  two  instances  will  show 
this.  Saturninus,  in  the  year  100,  when  attacked  by 

Q 


226 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Marius  under  orders  from  the  senate,  had  hoisted  a 
pilleus,  or  cap  of  liberty  which  the  emancipated  slave 
wore,  as  a  signal  to  the  slaves  of  the  city  that  they 
might  expect  their  liberty  if  they  supported  him ; 1 
and  Marius  a  few  years  later  took  the  same  step 
when  himself  attacked  by  Sulla.  Catiline,  in  63, 
Sallust  assures  us,  believed  it  possible  to  raise  the 
slaves  of  the  city  in  aid  of  his  revolutionary  plans,  and 
they  flocked  to  him  in  great  numbers  ;  but  he  after¬ 
wards  abandoned  his  intention,  thinking  that  to  mix 
up  the  cause  of  citizens  with  that  of  slaves  would 
not  be  judicious.2  It  is  here  too  that  the  gladiator 
slaves  first  meet  us  as  a  political  arm  ;  Cicero  had 
the  next  spring  to  defend  P.  Sulla  on  the  charge, 
among  others,  of  having  bought  gladiators  during 
the  conspiracy  wflth  seditious  views,  and  the  senate 
had  to  direct  that  the  bands  of  these  dangerous  men 
should  be  dispersed  to  Capua  and  other  municipal 
towns  at  a  distance.  Later  on  we  frequently  hear 
of  their  being  used  as  private  soldiery,  and  the 
government  in  the  last  years  of  the  Republic  ceased 
to  be  able  to  control  them.3  Again,  in  defending 
Sestius,  Cicero  asserts  that  Clodius  in  his  tribunate 
had  organised  a  levy  of  slaves  under  the  name  of 
collegia,  for  purposes  of  violence,  slaughter,  and 
rapine ;  and  even  if  this  is  an  exaggeration,  it  shows 

1  Val.  Max.  viii.  6.  2. 

3  Sail.  Cat.  24  and  56  ;  Wallon,  ii.  p.  318  foil. 

3  See,  e.g.,  Cic.  ad  Att.  ii.  24.  3  ;  Asconius,  in  Milonianam  (ed.  Clark, 
p.  31)  ;  Milo’s  host  of  slaves  had  gladiators  among  them,  and  were  organised 
in  military  fashion  (an  antesignanus,  p.  32),  when  he  fell  in  with  Clodius. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  227 

that  such  proceedings  were  not  deemed  impossible.1 
And  apart  from  the  actual  use  of  slaves  for 
revolutionary  objects,  or  as  private  body-guards, 
it  is  clear  from  Cicero’s  correspondence  that  as 
an  important  part  of  a  great  man’s  retinue  they 
might  indirectly  have  influence  in  elections  and 
on  other  political  occasions.  Quintus  Cicero,  in  his 
little  treatise  on  electioneering,2  urges  his  brother 
to  make  himself  agreeable  to  his  tribesmen,  neigh¬ 
bours,  clients,  freedmen,  and  even  slaves,  “  for  nearly 
all  the  talk  which  affects  one’s  public  reputation 
emanates  from  domestic  sources.”  And  Marcus  him¬ 
self,  in  the  last  letter  he  wrote  before  he  fled  into 
exile  in  58,  declares  that  all  his  friends  are  promis¬ 
ing  him  not  only  their  own  aid,  but  that  of  their 
clients,  freedmen,  and  slaves, — promises  which  doubt¬ 
less  might  have  been  kept  had  he  stayed  to  take 
advantage  of  them.* 

The  mention  of  the  freedmen  in  this  letter  may 
serve  to  remind  us  of  the  political  results  of  manu¬ 
mission,  the  second  fact  in  the  legal  aspect  of  Roman 
slavery.  The  most  important  of  these  is  the  rapid 
importation  of  foreign  blood  into  the  Roman  citizen 
body,  which  long  before  the  time  of  Cicero  largely 
consisted  of  enfranchised  slaves  or  their  descendants ; 
it  was  to  this  that  Scipio  Aemilianus  alluded  in  his 
famous  words  to  the  contio  he  was  addressing  after 
his-  return  from  Numantia,  “  Silence,  ye  to  whom 

1  Pro  Sestio,  15.  34.  *  De  Pet.  Consulatus,  5.  17. 

3  ad  Quint.  Fratr.  i.  2  ad  fin. 


228 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Italy  is  but  a  stepmother”  (Yal.  Max.  6.  2.  3).  Had 
manumission  been  held  in  check  or  in  some  way 
superintended  by  the  State,  there  would  have  been 
more  good  than  harm  in  it.  Many  men  of  note,  who 
had  an  influence  on  Roman  culture,  were  libertini,  such 
as  Livius  Andronicus  and  Caecilius  the  poets ;  Terence, 
Publilius  Syrus,  whose  acquaintance  we  made  in  the 
last  chapter  ;  Tiro  and  Alexis,  and  rather  later  Verrius 
Flaccus,  one  of  the  most  learned  men  who  ever 
wrote  in  Latin.  But  the  great  increase  in  the 
number  of  slaves,  and  the  absence  of  any  real 
difficulty  in  effecting  their  manumission,  led  to  the 
enfranchisement  of  crowds  of  rascals  as  compared 
with  the  few  valuable  men.  The  most  striking 
example  is  the  enfranchisement  of  10,000  by  Sulla, 
who  according  to  custom  took  his  name  Cornelius, 
and,  though  destined  to  be  a  kind  of  military 
guarantee  for  the  permanence  of  the  Sullan  institu¬ 
tions,  only  became  a  source  of  serious  peril  to  the 
State  at  the  time  of  Catiline’s  conspiracy.  Caesar, 
who  was  probably  more  alive  to  this  kind  of  social 
danger  than  his  contemporaries,  sent  out  a  great 
number  of  libertini, — the  majority,  says  Strabo,  of 
his  colonists, — to  his  new  foundation  at  Corinth.1 
But  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  writing  in  the  time 
of  Augustus,  when  he  stayed  some  time  in  Rome, 
draws  a  terrible  picture  of  the  evil  effects  of  indis¬ 
criminate  manumission,  unchecked  by  the  law.2 

“  Many,”  he  says,  “  are  indignant  when  they  see 

1  Strabo,  p.  381.  5  Dion.  Hal.  iv.  23. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 


229 


unworthy  men  manumitted,  and  condemn  a  usage 
which  gives  such  men  the  citizenship  of  a  sovereign 
state  whose  destiny  is  to  govern  the  world.  As  for 
me,  I  doubt  if  the  practice  should  be  stopped  alto¬ 
gether,  lest  greater  evil  should  be  the  result ;  I 
would  rather  that  it  should  be  checked  as  far  as 
possible,  so  that  the  state  may  no  longer  be  invaded 
by  men  of  such  villainous  character.  The  censors,  or 
at  least  the  consuls,  should  examine  all  whom  it  is 
proposed  to  manumit,  inquiring  into  their  origin  and 
the  reasons  and  mode  of  their  enfranchisement,  as  in 
their  examination  of  the  equites.  Those  whom  they 
find  worthy  of  citizenship  should  have  their  names 
inscribed  on  tables,  distributed  among  the  tribes, 
with  leave  to  reside  in  the  city.  As  to  the  crowd 
of  villains  and  criminals,  they  should  be  sent  far 
away,  under  pretext  of  founding  some  colony.” 

These  judicious  remarks  of  a  foreigner  only  ex¬ 
pressed  what  was  probably  a  common  feeling  among 
the  best  men  of  that  time.  Augustus  made  some 
attempt  to  limit  the  enfranchising  power  of  the 
owner;  but  the  Leges  Aelia  Sentia  andFuria  Caninia 
do  not  lie  within  the  compass  of  this  book.  No 
great  success  could  attend  these  efforts ;  the  ab¬ 
normal  circumstances  which  had  brought  to  Rome 
the  great  familiae  of  slaves  reacted  inevitably  upon 
the  citizen  body  itself  through  the  process  of  manu¬ 
mission.  Rome  had  to  pay  heavily  in  this,  as  in 
so  many  other  ways,  for  her  advancement  to  the 
sovereignty  of  the  civilised  world.  I  may  be  allowed 


230 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


to  translate  the  eloquent  words  in  which  the  French 
historian  of  slavery,  in  whose  great  work  the  history 
of  ancient  slavery  is  treated  as  only  a  scholar- 
statesman  can  treat  it,  sums  up  this  aspect  of  the 
subject : 

“  Emancipation,  prevalent  as  it  might  appear  to 
be  towards  the  beginning  of  the  Empire,  was  not 
a  step  towards  the  suppression  of  slavery,  but  a 
natural  and  inevitable  sequence  of  the  institution 
itself,  —  an  outlet  for  excess  in  an  epoch  over¬ 
abundant  in  slaves :  a  means  of  renewing  the  mass, 
corrupted  by  the  deleterious  influence  of  its  own 
condition,  before  it  should  be  totally  ruined.  As 
water,  diverted  from  its  free  course,  becomes  impure 
in  the  basin  which  imprisons  it,  and  when  released, 
will  still  retain  its  impurity ;  so  it  is  not  to  be 
thought  that  instincts  perverted  by  slavery,  habits 
depraved  from  childhood,  could  be  reformed  and 
redressed  in  the  slave  by  a  tardy  liberation.  Thrust 
into  the  midst  of  a  society  itself  vitiated  by  the 
admixture  of  slavery,  he  only  became  more  unre¬ 
strainedly,  more  dangerously  bad.  Manumission  was 
thus  no  remedy  for  the  deterioration  of  the  citizens : 
it  was  powerless  even  to  better  the  condition  of  the 
slave.”  1 

3.  The  ethical  aspect  of  Roman  slavery.  What 
were  the  moral  effects  of  the  system  (l)  on  the  slaves 
themselves  ;  (2)  on  the  freemen  who  owned  them  ? 

First,  as  regards  the  slaves  themselves,  there  are 

1  Wallon,  op.  cit.  ii.  p.  436. 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 


231 


two  facts  to  be  fully  realised ;  when  this  is  done, 
the  inferences  will  be  sufficiently  obvious.  Let  us 
remember  that  by  far  the  greater  number  of  the 
slaves,  both  in  the  city  and  on  the  land,  were 
brought  from  countries  bordering  on  the  Mediter¬ 
ranean,  where  they  had  been  living  in  some  kind 
of  elementary  civilisation,  in  which  the  germs  of 
further  development  were  present  in  the  form  of  the 
natural  ties  of  race  and  kinship  and  locality,  of  tribe 
or  family  or  village  community,  and  with  their  own 
religion,  customs,  and  government.  Permanent  cap¬ 
tivity  in  a  foreign  land  and  in  a  servile  condition 
snapped  these  ties  once  and  for  all.  To  take  a  single 
appalling  instance,  the  150,000  human  beings  who 
were  sold  into  slavery  in  Epirus  by  the  conqueror 
of  Pydna,  or  as  many  of  them  as  were  transported 
out  of  their  own  country— and  these  were  probably 
the  vast  majority, — were  thereby  deprived  for  the 
rest  of  their  lives  of  all  social  and  family  life,  of 
their  ancestral  worship,  in  fact  of  everything  that 
could  act  as  a  moral  tie,  as  a  restraining  influence 
upon  vicious  instincts.  With  the  lamentable  effect 
of  this  on  the  regions  thus  depopulated  we  are  not 
here  concerned,  but  it  was  beyond  doubt  most 
serious,  and  must  be  taken  into  account  in  reckoning 
up  the  various  causes  which  later  on  brought  about 
the  enfeeblement  of  the  whole  Roman  Empire.1  The 
point  for  us  is  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  popula¬ 
tion  of  Rome  and  of  Italy  was  now  composed  of 


1  See  Otto  Seeck,  Geschichte  des  Untergangs  dev  antiken  Jf’clt,  ch.  iv.  and  v. 


232 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


human  beings  destitute  of  all  natural  means  of  moral 
and  social  development.  The  ties  that  had  been 
once  broken  could  never  be  replaced.  There  is  no 
need  to  dwell  on  the  inevitable  result, — the  introduc¬ 
tion  into  the  Roman  State  of  a  poisonous  element  of 
terrible  volume  and  power. 

The  second  fact  that  we  have  to  grasp  is  this.  In 
the  old  days,  when  such  slaves  as  there  then  were 
came  from  Italy  itself,  and  worked  under  the  master’s 
own  eye  upon  the  farm,  they  might  and  did  share  to 
some  extent  in  the  social  life  of  the  family,  and  even 
in  its  religious  rites,  and  so  might  under  favourable 
circumstances  come  within  the  range  of  its  moral 
influences.1  But  towards  the  close  of  the  Republican 
period  those  moral  influences,  as  we  have  seen,  were 
fast  vanishing  in  the  majority  of  families  which  pos¬ 
sessed  large  numbers  of  slaves.  The  common  kind 
of  slave  in  the  city,  who  was  not  attached  to  his 
owner  as  was  a  man  of  culture  like  Tiro,  had  no 
moral  standard  except  implicit  obedience  ;  the  highest 
virtue  was  to  obey  orders  diligently,  and  fear  of 
punishment  was  the  only  sanction  of  his  conduct. 
The  typical  city  slave,  as  he  appears  in  Plautus, 
though  by  no  means  a  miserable  being  without  any 
enjoyment  of  life,  is  a  liar  and  a  thief,  bent  on  over¬ 
reaching,  and  destitute  of  a  conscience.2  We  need 

O’ 

1  See  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  172. 

3  Wallon  (ii.  p.  255  foil.)  has  collected  a  number  of  examples.  Plautus’ 
slaves  are  as  much  Athenian  as  Roman,  hut  the  conditions  would  be  much 
the  same  in  each  case.  Cp.  Varro,  Men.  Sat.  ed.  Riese,  p.  220:  ‘‘Crede 
mihi,  plures  dominos  servi  comederunt  quam  canes.” 


tii  THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  233 

but  reflect  that  the  slave  must  often  have  had 
to  do  vile  things  in  the  name  of  his  one  virtue, 
obedience,  to  realise  that  the  poison  was  present,  and 
ready  to  become  active,  in  every  Roman  household. 
“  Nec  turpe  est  quod  dominus  iubet.”  1 

On  the  latifundia  in  the  country  the  master  was 
himself  seldom  resident,  and  the  slaves  were  under  the 
control  of  one  or  more  of  their  own  kind,  promoted 
for  good  conduct  and  capacity.  The  slaves  of  the 
great  sheep  and  cattle  farms  were,  as  we  saw,  of  the 
wildest  sort,  and  we  may  judge  of  their  morality 
by  the  story  of  the  Sicilian  slave-owner  who,  when 
his  slaves  complained  that  they  were  insufficiently 
clothed,  told  them  that  the  remedy  was  to  rob  the 
travellers  they  fell  in  with.2  The  ergastula,  where 
slaves  were  habitually  chained  and  treated  like  beasts, 
were  sowing  the  seeds  of  permanent  moral  contamina¬ 
tion  in  Italy.3  But  on  the  smaller  estates  of  olive- 
yard  and  vineyard  their  condition  was  better,  and 
a  humane  owner  who  chose  his  overseers  carefully 
might  possibly  reproduce  something  of  the  old  feeling 
of  participation  in  the  life  as  well  as  the  industry  of 
the  economic  unit.  In  an  interesting  chapter  Varro 
advises  that  the  vilicus  should  be  carefully  selected, 
and  should  be  conciliated  by  being  allowed  a  wife  and 
the  means  of  accumulating  a  property  ( peculium ) ;  he 
even  urges  that  he  should  enforce  obedience  rather 

1  Petronius,  Sat.  75.  2  Diodorus  xxxiv.  38. 

3  “Coli  rura  ab  ergastulis  pessimum  est  et  quicquid  agitur  a  de- 
sperantibus,”  wrote  Pliny  (Nat.  Hist,  xviii.  36)  in  the  famous  passage  about 
latifundia. 


234 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


by  words  than  blows.1  But  of  the  condition  of  the 
ordinary  slave  on  the  farm  this  is  the  only  hint  he 
gives  us,  and  it  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to 
him,  or  to  any  other  Roman  of  his  day,  that  the 
work  to  be  done  would  be  better  performed  by  men 
not  deprived  by  their  condition  of  a  moral  sense ; 
that  slave  labour  is  unwillingly  and  unintelligently 
rendered,  because  the  labourer  has  no  hope,  no  sense 
of  dutiful  conduct  leading  him  to  rejoice  in  the 
work  of  his  hands.  Nor  did  any  writer  recognise  the 
fact  that  slaves  were  potentially  moral  beings,  until 
Christianity  gave  its  sanction  to  dutiful  submission 
as  an  act  of  morality  that  might  be  consecrated  by  a 
Divine  authority.2 

Lastly,  it  is  not  difficult  to  realise  the  mischievous 
effects  of  such  a  slave  system  as  the  Roman  upon 
the  slave-owning  class  itself.  Even  those  who  them¬ 
selves  had  no  slaves  would  be  affected  by  it ;  for 
though,  as  we  have  seen,  free  labour  was  by  no  means 
ousted  by  it,  it  must  have  helped  to  create  an  idle 
class  of  freemen,  with  all  its  moral  worthlessness. 
Loner  ago,  in  his  remarkable  book  on  The  Slave  Power 
in  America  before  the  Civil  War,  Professor  Cairnes 
drew  a  striking  comparison  between  the  “mean  whites” 
of  the  Southern  States,  the  result  of  slave  labour  on 
the  plantations,  and  the  idle  population  of  the  Roman 
capital,  fed  on  cheap  corn  and  ready  for  any  kind  of 

1  R.R.  i.  17. 

2  See  some  excellent  remarks  on  this  subject  in  Ecce  Homo,  towards 
the  end  of  ch.  xii.  (  “Universality  of  the  Christian  Republic  ”). 


VII 


THE  SLAVE  POPULATION 


235 


rowdyism.1  But  in  the  case  of  the  great  slave-owners 
the  mischief  was  much  more  serious,  though  perhaps 
more  difficult  to  detect.  The  master  of  a  horde  of 
slaves  had  half  his  moral  sense  paralysed,  because  he 
had  no  feeling  of  responsibility  for  so  many  of  those 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact  every  day  and  hour. 
When  most  members  of  a  man’s  household  or  estate 
are  absolutely  at  his  mercy,  when  he  has  no  feeling 
of  any  contractual  relation  with  them,  his  sense  of 
duty  and  obligation  is  inevitably  deadened,  even 
towards  others  who  are  nob  thus  in  his  power.  Can 
we  doubt  that  the  lack  of  a  sense  of  justice  and 
right  dealing,  more  especially  towards  provincials,  but 
also  towards  a  man’s  fellow-citizens,  which  we  have 
noticed  in  the  two  upper  sections  of  society,  was  due 
in  great  part  to  the  constant  exercise  of  arbitrary 
power  at  home,  to  the  habit  of  looking  upon  the  men 
who  ministered  to  his  luxurious  ease  as  absolutely 
without  claim  upon  his  respect  or  his  benevolence  ? 
or  that  the  recklessness  of  human  life  which  was 
shown  in  the  growing  popularity  of  bloody  gladia¬ 
torial  shows,  and  in  the  incredible  cruelty  of  the 
victors  in  the  Civil  Wars,  was  the  result  of  this 
unconscious  cultivation,  from  childhood  onwards,  of 
the  despotic  temper  ? 2  Even  the  best  men  of  the 
age,  such  as  Cicero,  Caesar,  Lucretius,  show  hardly  a 

1  The  Slave  Power,  ch.  v.,  and  especially  p.  374  foil.  A  living  picture  of 
the  mean  white  may  be  found  in  Mark  Twain’s  Huckleberry  Finn,  drawn 
from  his  own  early  experience,  particularly  in  ch.  xxi. 

2  “Regum  nobis  induimus  animos,”  wrote  Seneca  in  a  well-known  letter 
about  the  claims  of  slaves  as  human  beings,  Ep.  47. 


236  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME  CHAP.  VII 

sign  of  any  sympathy  with,  or  interest  in,  that  vast 
mass  of  suffering  humanity,  both  bond  and  free, 
with  which  the  Roman  dominion  was  populated ; 
to  disregard  misery,  except  when  they  found  it 
among  the  privileged  classes,  had  become  second 
nature  to  them.  We  can  better  realise  this  if  we 
reflect  that  even  at  the  present  day,  in  spite  of  the 
absence  of  slavery  and  the  presence  of  philanthropical 
societies,  the  average  man  of  wealth  gives  hardly 
more  than  a  passing  thought  to  the  discomfort  and 
distress  of  the  crowded  population  of  our  great  cities. 
The  ordinary  callousness  of  human  nature  had,  under 
the  baleful  influence  of  slavery,  become  absolute 
blindness,  nor  were  men’s  eyes  to  be  opened  until 
Christianity  began  to  leaven  the  world  with  the 
doctrine  of  universal  love. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN,  IN  TOWN 
AND  COUNTRY 

We  saw  that  the  poorer  classes  in  Rome  were 
lodged  in  huge  insulae,  and  enjoyed  nothing  that 
can  be  called  home  life.  The  wealthy  families,  on 
the  other  hand,  lived  in  domus ,  i.e.  separate  dwell¬ 
ings,  accommodating  only  one  family,  often,  even  in 
the  Ciceronian  period,  of  great  magnificence.  But 
even  these  great  houses  hardly  suggest  a  life  such 
as  that  which  we  associate  with  the  word  home. 
As  Mr.  Tucker  has  pointed  out  in  the  case  of 
Athens,1  the  warmer  climates  of  Greece  and  Italy 
encouraged  all  classes  to  spend  much  more  of  their 
time  out  of  doors  and  in  public  places  than  we  do ; 
and  the  rapid  growth  of  convenient  public  buildings, 
porticoes,  basilicas,  baths,  and  so  on,  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  features  in  the  history  of  the  city 
during  the  last  two  centuries  B.c.  Augustus,  part 
of  whose  policy  it  was  to  make  the  city  population 
comfortable  and  contented,  carried  this  tendency  still 


1  Life  in  Ancient  Athens,  p.  55. 
237 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


238 

further,  and  under  the  Empire  the  town  house  played 
quite  a  subordinate  part  in  Roman  social  life.  The 
best  way  to  realise  this  out-of-door  life,  lazy  and 
sociable,  of  the  Augustan  age,  is  to  read  the  first 
book  of  Ovid’s  Ars  Amatoria, — a  fascinating  picture 
of  a  beautiful  city  and  its  pleasure -loving  inhabi¬ 
tants.  But  with  the  Augustan  age  we  are  not  here 
concerned. 

Yet  the  Roman  house,  like  the  Italian  house  in 
general,  was  in  origin  and  essence  really  a  home. 
The  family  was  the  basis  of  society,  and  by  the 
family  we  must  understand  not  only  the  head  of 
the  house  with  his  wife,  children,  and  slaves,  but 
also  the  divine  beings  who  dwelt  there.  As  the 
State  comprised  both  human  and  divine  inhabitants, 
so  also  did  the  house,  which  was  indeed  the  germ  and 
type  of  the  State.  Thus  the  house  was  in  those  early 
times  not  less  but  even  more  than  a  house  is  for  us, 
for  in  it  was  concentrated  all  that  was  dear  to  the 
family,  all  that  was  essential  to  its  life,  both  natural 
and  supernatural.  And  the  two — the  natural  and 
supernatural — wrere  not  distinct  from  each  other,  but 
associated,  in  fact  almost  identical ;  the  hearth-fire 
was  the  dwelling  of  Yesta,  the  spirit  of  the  flame ; 
the  Penates  were  the  spirits  of  the  stores  on  which 
the  family  subsisted,  and  dwelt  in  the  store-cupboard 
or  larder ;  the  paterfamilias  had  himself  a  super¬ 
natural  side,  in  the  shape  of  his  Genius  ;  and  the 
Lar  familiaris  was  the  protecting  spirit  of  the  farm¬ 
land,  who  had  found  his  way  into  the  house  in  course 


VIII  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  239 

of  time,  perhaps  with  the  slave  labourers,  who  always 
had  a  share  in  his  worship.1 

It  would  probably  be  unjust  to  the  Roman  of  the 
late  Republic  to  assume  that  this  beautiful  idea  of 
the  common  life  of  the  human  and  divine  beings  in 
a  house  was  entirely  ignored  or  forgotten  by  him. 
No  doubt  the  reality  of  the  belief  had  vanished ;  it 
could  not  be  said  of  the  city  family,  as  Ovid  said  of 
the  farm-folk : 2 

ante  focos  olim  scamnis  considere  longis 
inos  erat  et  mensae  credere  adesse  deos. 

The  great  noble  or  banker  of  Cicero’s  day  could  no 
longer  honestly  say  that  he  believed  in  the  real 
presence  of  his  family  deities ;  the  kernel  of  the  old 
feeling  had  shrunk  away  under  the  influence  of  Greek 
philosophy  and  of  new  interests  in  life,  new  objects 
and  ambitions.  But  the  shell  remained,  and  in  some 
families,  or  in  moments  of  anxiety  and  emotion,  even 
the  old  feeling  of  religio  may  have  returned.  Cicero 
is  appealing  to  a  common  sentiment,  in  a  passage 
already  once  quoted  ( de  Domo,  109),  when  he  insists 
on  the  real  religious  character  of  a  house :  “  hie  arae 
sunt,  hie  foci,  hie  di  penates :  hie  sacra,  religiones, 
caerimoniae  continentur.”  And  this  was  in  the  heart 
of  the  city  ;  in  the  country-house  there  was  doubtless 
more  leisure  and  opportunity  for  such  feeling.  In 
the  second  century  b.c.  old  Cato  had  described  the 

1  For  this  view  of  the  Lar  see  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus  der  Romer, 

p.  148  foil. ;  and  a  note  by  the  author  in  Archiv  fur  Religionswissemchaft, 
1906,  p.  529. 

9  Fatti,  vi.  299. 


240 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


paterfamilias,  on  his  arrival  at  his  farm  from  the 
city,  saluting  the  Lar  familiaris  before  he  goes  about 
his  round  of  inspection ;  and  even  Horace  hardly 
shows  a  trace  of  the  agnostic  when  he  pictures  the 
slaves  of  the  farm,  and  the  master  with  them,  sitting 
at  their  meal  in  front  of  the  image  of  the  Lar.1  We 
may  perhaps  guess  that  with  the  renewal  of  the  love  of 
country  life,  and  with  that  revival  of  the  cultivation  of 
the  vine  and  olive,  and  indeed  of  husbandry  in  general, 
which  is  recognisable  as  a  feature  of  the  last  years  of 
the  Republic,  and  which  is  known  to  us  from  Varro’s 
work  on  farming,  and  from  Virgil’s  Georgies ,  the  old 
religion  of  the  household  gained  a  new  life. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  give  any  detailed  ac¬ 
count  of  the  shape  and  divisions  of  a  Roman  house  of 
the  city  ;  full  and  excellent  descriptions  may  be  found 
in  Middleton’s  article  “  Domus  ”  in  the  Dictionary 
of  Antiquities,  and  in  Lanciani’s  Ruins  and  Excava¬ 
tions  of  Ancient  Rome  ;  and  to  these  should  be  added 
Mau’s  work  on  Pompeii,  where  the  houses  wTere  of  a 
Roman  rather  than  a  Greek  type.  What  we  are 
concerned  with  is  the  house  as  a  home  or  a  centre 
of  life,  and  it  is  only  in  this  aspect  of  it  that  we 
shall  discuss  it  here. 

The  oldest  Italian  dwelling  was  a  mere  wigwam 
with  a  hearth  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  and  a  hole 
at  the  top  to  let  the  smoke  out.  But  the  house  of 
historical  times  was  rectangular,  with  one  central 
room  or  hall,  in  which  was  concentrated  the  whole 

1  Cato,  R.R.,  ch.  ii.  init. ;  Horace,  Epodc  2.  65  ;  Sat.  ii.  6.  65. 


VIII 


HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  241 

indoor  life  of  the  family,  the  whole  meaning  and 
purpose  of  the  dwelling.  Here  the  human  and 
divine  inhabitants  originally  lived  together.  Here 
was  the  hearth,  “  the  natural  altar  of  the  dwelling- 
room  of  man,”  as  Aust  beautifully  expresses  it ; 1  this 
was  the  seat  of  Vesta,  and  behind  it  was  the  penus 
-  or  store-closet,  the  seat  of  the  Penates;  thus  Vesta 
and  the  Penates  are  in  the  most  genuine  sense  the 
protecting  and  nourishing  deities  of  the  household. 
Here,  too,  was  the  Lar  of  the  familia  with  his  little 
altar,  behind  the  entrance,  and  here  was  the  lectus 
genialis,2  and  the  Genius  of  the  paterfamilias.  As 
you  looked  into  the  atrium,  after  passing  the 
vestibulum  or  space  between  street  and  doorway, 
and  the  ostium  or  doorway  with  its  janua,  you  saw 
in  front  of  you  the  impluvium,  into  which  the  rain¬ 
water  fell  from  the  compluvium,  i.e.  the  square 
opening  in  the  roof  with  sloping  sides ;  on  either 
side  were  recesses  ( alae ),  which,  if  the  family  were 
noble,  contained  the  images  of  the  ancestors.  Opposite 
you  was  another  recess,  the  tablinum,  opening  prob¬ 
ably  into  a  little  garden ;  here  in  the  warm  weather 
the  family  might  take  their  meals. 

This  is  the  atrium  of  the  old  Roman  house,  and 
to  understand  that  house  nothing  more  is  needed. 
And  indeed  architecturally,  the  atrium  never  lost 
its  significance  as  the  centre  of  the  house ;  it  is  to 

1  Romische  Religion,  p.  214. 

2  Or  lectulus  adversus,  i.e.  opposite  the  door ;  Ascon.  ed.  Clark,  p.  43, 
a  good  passage  for  the  contents  of  an  atrium. 

R 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


242 

the  house  as  the  choir  is  to  a  cathedral.1  And  it  is 
easy  to  see  how  naturally  it  could  develop  into  a 
much  more  complicated  but  convenient  dwelling ; 
for  example,  the  alae  could  be  extended  to  form 
separate  chambers  or  sleeping -rooms,  the  tablinum 
could  be  made  into  a  permanent  dining-room,  or 
such  rooms  could  be  opened  out  on  either  side  of 
it.  A  second  story  could  be  added,  and  in  the  city, 
where  space  was  valuable,  this  was  usually  the  case. 
The  garden  could  be  converted,  after  the  Greek 
fashion,  and  under  a  Greek  name,  into  a  peristylium, 
i.e.  an  open  court  with  a  pretty  colonnade  round  it, 
and  if  there  were  space  enough,  you  might  add  at 
the  rear  of  this  again  an  exedra ,  or  an  oecus,  i.e.  open 
saloons  convenient  for  many  purposes.  Thus  the 
house  came  to  be  practically  divided  into  two  parts, 
the  atrium  with  its  belongings,  i.e.  the  Roman  part, 
and  the  peristylium  with  its  developments,  forming 
the  Greek  part ;  and  the  house  reflects  the  composite 
character  of  Roman  life  in  its  later  period,  just  as 
do  Roman  literature  and  Roman  art.  The  Roman 
part  was  retained  for  reception  rooms,  and  the  Lar, 
the  Penates,  and  Vesta,  with  their  respective  seats, 
retired  into  the  new  apartments  for  privacy.  When 
the  usual  crowd  of  morning  callers  came  to  wait  upon 
a  great  man,  they  would  not  as  a  rule  penetrate 
farther  than  the  atrium,  and  there  he  might  keep 
them  waiting  as  long  as  he  pleased.  The  Greek 
part  of  the  house,  the  peristylium  and  its  belongings, 

1  Set  Man’s  Pompeii,  p.  248. 


Tin  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  243 

was  reserved  for  his  family  and  his  most  intimate 
friends.  In  Pompeii,  which  was  an  old  Greek  town 
with  Roman  life  and  habits  superadded,  we  find 
atrium  and  peristylium  both  together  as  early  as  the 
second  century  B.c.1  At  what  period  exactly  the 
house  of  the  noble  in  Rome  began  thus  to  develop 
is  not  so  certain.  But  by  the  time  of  Cicero  every 
good  domus  had  without  doubt  its  private  apartments 
at  the  rear,  varying  in  shape  and  size  according  to 
the  ground  on  which  the  house  stood.2 

The  accompanying  plan  will  give  a  sufficiently  clear 
idea  of  the  development  of  the  domus  from  the  atrium, 
and  its  consequent  division  into  two  parts  ;  it  is  that 
of  “  the  house  of  the  silver  wedding  ”  at  Pompeii. 

But  in  spite  of  all  the  convenience  and  comfort 
of  the  fully  developed  dwelling  of  the  rich  man  at 
Rome,  there  was  much  to  make  him  sigh  for  a 
quieter  life  than  he  could  enjoy  in  the  noisy  city. 
He  might  indeed,  if  he  could  afford  it,  remove  outside 
the  walls  to  a  “domus  suburbana,”  on  one  of  the  roads 
leading  out  of  Rome,  or  on  the  hill  looking  down  on 
the  Campus  Martius,  like  the  house  of  Sallust  the 
historian,  with  its  splendid  gardens,  which  still  in 
part  exists  in  the  dip  between  the  Quirinal  and 
the  Pincian  hills.3  But  nowhere  within  three  miles 

1  Mau,  Pompeii,  p.  240. 

2  The  extent  to  which  this  could  be  carried  can  he  guessed  from  Sail. 
Cat.  12. 

3  Quintus  Cicero,  growing  rich  with  Caesar  in  Gaul,  had  a  fancy  for  a 
domus  suburbana  :  Cic.  ad  Q.  Fr.  iii.  1.  7.  Marcus  tells  his  brother  in  this 
letter  that  he  himself  had  no  great  fancy  for  such  a  residence,  and  that  his 


244 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


or  more  of  Rome  could  a  man  lose  his  sense  of  being 
in  a  town,  or  escape  from  the  smoke,  the  noise,  the 
excitement  of  the  streets.  After  what  has  been  said 


Plan  of  the  House  of  the  Silver  Wedding.  From  Mau’s  Pompeii. 


a.  Fauces. 

<1.  Tetrastyle  atrium. 

n.  Dining-room. 

o.  Tablinura. 

p.  Andron. 

r.  Peristyle. 

s.  Kitchen. 

t-v.  Bath.  (v.  Apodyterium.  u.  Tepi- 
darinm.  t.  Caldarium.) 
iv.  Summer  dining-room, 
i,  z.  Sleeping-rooms. 
y.  Exedra. 


1.  Open-air  swimming  tank,  in  a 
small  garden  (2). 

3.  Corridor  leading  to  another  house 

and  to  a  side  street. 

4.  Oecus. 

6.  Garden,  partially  excavated. 

7.  Open-air  triclinium. 

a-r.  Fauces,  atrium,  and  other  rooms 
of  separate  dwelling  connected 
with  the  larger  house. 


in  previous  chapters,  the  crowd  in  the  Forum  and 
its  adjuncts  can  be  left  to  the  reader’s  imagination  ; 


house  on  the  Palatine  had  all  the  charm  of  such  a  suburbana.  His  villa  at 
Tusculum,  as  we  shall  see,  served  the  purpose  of  a  house  close  to  the  city. 


VIII 


HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  245 


but  if  he  wishes  to  stimulate  it,  let  him  look  at 
the  seventh  chapter  of  Cicero’s  speech  for  Plancius, 
where  the  orator  makes  use  of  the  jostling  in  the 
Forum  as  an  illustration  so  familiar  that  none  can 
fail  to  understand  it.1  A  relief,  of  which  a  figure  is 
given  in  Burn’s  Roman  Literature  and  Roman  Art, 
p.  79,  gives  a  good  idea  of  the  close  crowding, 
though  no  doubt  it  was  habitual  with  Roman  artists 
to  overcrowd  their  scenes  with  human  figures.  Even 
as  early  as  the  first  Punic  war  a  lady  could  complain 
of  the  crowded  state  of  the  Forum,  and,  with  the 
grim  humour  peculiar  to  Romans,  could  declare  that 
her  brother,  who  had  just  lost  a  great  number  of 
Roman  lives  in  a  defeat  by  the  Carthaginians,  ought 
to  be  in  command  of  another  fleet  in  order  to  relieve 
the  city  of  more  of  its  surplus  population.  What 
then  must  the  Forum  have  been  two  centuries  later, 
when  half  the  business  of  the  Empire  was  daily 
transacted  there !  And  even  outside  the  walls  the 
trouble  did  not  cease ;  all  night  long  the  wagons 
were  rolling  into  the  city,  which  were  not  allowed  in 
the  day-time,  at  any  rate  after  Caesar’s  municipal  law 
of  46  b.c.  Like  the  motors  of  to-day,  one  might 
imagine  that  their  noise  would  depreciate  the  value 
of  houses  on  the  great  roads.  The  callers  and  clients 
would  be  here  of  a  morning,  as  in  the  house  within 
the  walls ;  the  bore  might  be  met  not  only  in  the 
Via  Sacra,  like  Horace’s  immortal  friend,  but  wher- 

1  A  great  number  of  passages  about  the  noise  and  crowds  of  Rome  are 
collected  in  Mayor’s  Notes  to  Juvenal,  pp.  173,  203,  207. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


246 

ever  the  stream  of  life  hurried  with  its  busy  eddies.1 
Lucilius  drew  a  graphic  picture  of  this  feverish  life, 
which  is  fortunately  preserved  ;  it  refers  of  course  to 
a  time  before  Cicero’s  birth  (Fragm.  9,  Baehrens) : 

nunc  vero  a  mani  ad  noctem,  festo  atque  profesto, 
totus  item  pariter  populus,  plebesque  patresque, 
iactare  indu  foro  se  oumes,  decedere  nusquam  : 
uni  se  atque  eidem  studio  omnes  dedere  et  arti, 
verba  dare  ut  caute  possint,  pugnare  dolose : 
blanditia  certare,  bonum  simulare  virum  se : 
insidias  facere,  ut  si  hostes  sint  omnibus  omnea 

That  this  exciting  social  atmosphere,  with  its 
jostling  and  over-reaching  in  the  Forum,  and  its 
callers  and  dinner-parties  in  the  house,  had  some 
sinister  influence  on  men’s  tempers  and  nerves,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  Cicero  dearly  loved  the  life  of  the 
city,  but  he  paid  for  it  by  a  sensibility  which  is 
constantly  apparent  in  his  letters,  and  diminished 
his  value  as  a  statesman.  When  he  wrote  from 
Cilicia  to  his  more  youthful  friend  Caelius,  urging 
him  to  stick  to  the  city,  in  words  that  are  almost 
pathetic,  it  never  occurred  to  him  that  he  was 
prescribing  exactly  that  course  of  treatment  which 
had  done  himself  much  damage.2  The  clear  sight 
and  strong  nerve  of  Caesar,  as  compared  with  so 
many  of  his  contemporaries,  was  doubtless  largely 

1  Some  interesting  remarks  on  the  general  aspect  of  the  city  will  be  found 
in  the  concluding  chapter  of  Lanciani's  Ruins  and  Excavations.  For  the 
bore  elsewhere  than  in  Rome,  see  below,  p.  256. 

2  ad  Fam.  ii.  12:  “Urbem,  Urbem,  mi  Rufe,  cole,  et  in  ista  luce  vive. 
Omnis  peregrinatio  (foreign  travel)  obscura  et  sordida  est  iis,  quorum 
industria  Roma  potest  illustris  esse,”  etc. 


VIH  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  247 

due  to  the  fact  that  between  70  and  50  B.C.,  i.e.  in 
the  prime  of  life,  he  spent  some  twelve  of  the  twenty 
years  in  the  fresher  air  of  Spain  and  Gaul.  Some 
men  were  fairly  worn  out  with  dissipation  and  the 
resulting  ennui,  and  could  get  no  relief  even  in  a 
country  villa.  Lucretius  has  drawn  a  wonderful 
picture  of  such  an  unfortunate,  who  hurries  from 
Rome  into  the  country,  and  finding  himself  bored 
there  almost  as  soon  as  he  arrives,  orders  out  his 
carriage  to  return  to  the  city.  To  fill  oneself  with 
good  things,  yet  never  to  be  satisfied  (explere  bonis 
rebus,  satiareque  nunquam),  was  even  for  the  true 
Epicurean  a  most  dismal  fate.1 

But  there  was  at  this  time,  and  had  been  for 
many  generations,  a  genuine  desire  to  escape  at  times 
from  town  to  country ;  and  Cicero,  in  spite  of  his 
pathetic  exhortation  to  Caelius,  was  himself  a  keen 
lover  of  the  ease  and  leisure  which  he  could  find 
only  in  his  country-houses.  The  first  great  Roman 
of  whom  we  know  that  he  had  a  rural  villa,  not  only 
or  chiefly  for  farming  purposes,  but  as  a  refuge  from 
the  city  and  its  tumult,  was  Scipio  Africanus  the 
elder.  His  villa  at  Liternum  on  the  Campanian 
coast  is  described  by  Seneca  in  his  86th  epistle ; 
it  was  small,  and  without  the  comforts  and  con¬ 
veniences  of  the  later  country-house ;  but  its  real 
significance  lies  not  so  much  in  the  increasing  wealth 
that  could  make  a  residence  possible  without  a  farm 

1  Lucr.  ii.  22  foil. ;  iii.  1060  foil.  Cp.  Seneca,  Ep.  69 :  ‘  Frequena 
migratio  instabilis  animi  est !  ” 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


248 

attached  to  it,  but  in  the  growing  sense  of  indi¬ 
viduality  that  made  men  wish  for  such  a  retreat. 
There  are  other  signs  that  Scipio  was  a  man  of  strong 
personality,  unlike  the  typical  Roman  of  his  day  ;  he 
put  a  value  upon  his  own  thoughts  and  habits,  apart 
from  his  duty  to  the  State,  and  retired  to  Liternum 
to  indulge  them.  The  younger  Scipio  too  (Aemili- 
anus),  though  no  blood-relation  of  his,  had  the  same 
instinct,  but  in  his  case  it  was  rather  the  desire  for 
leisure  and  relaxation, — the  same  love  of  a  real 
holiday  that  we  all  know  so  well  in  our  modern 
life.  “  Leisure,”  says  Cicero,  is  not  “  contentio  animi 
sed  relaxatio  ”  ;  and  in  a  charming  passage  he  goes  on 
to  describe  Scipio  and  Laelius  gathering  shells  on  the 
sea -shore,  and  becoming  boys  again  (repuerascere).1 
This  desire  for  ease  and  relaxation,  for  the  chance 
of  being  for  a  while  your  true  self, — a  self  worth 
something  apart  from  its  existence  as  a  citizen,  is 
apparent  in  the  Roman  of  Cicero’s  day,  and  still 
more  in  the  hard-working  functionary  of  the  Empire. 
Twice  in  his  life  the  morbid  emperor  Tiberius  shrank 
from  the  eyes  of  men,  once  at  Rhodes  and  afterwards 
at  Capreae, — a  melancholy  recluse  worn  out  by  hard 
work. 

Everyman  had  to  provide  his  own  “health  resort” 
in  those  days  :  there  was  nothing  to  correspond  to 
the  modern  hotel.  Even  at  the  great  luxurious 
watering-places  on  the  Campanian  coast,  Baiae  and 
Bauli,  the  houses,  so  far  as  we  know,  were  all  private 


1  de  Oratore,  ii.  22. 


VIII  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  249 

residences.1  I  do  not  propose  to  include  in  this 
chapter  any  account  of  these  centres  of  luxury  and 
vice,  which  were  far  indeed  from  giving  any  rest  or 
relief  to  the  weary  Roman  ;  the  society  of  Baiae 
was  the  centre  of  scandal  and  gossip,  where  a  woman 
like  Clodia,  the  Lesbia  of  Catullus,  could  live  in 
wickedness  before  the  eyes  of  all  men.2  Let  us 
turn  to  a  more  agreeable  subject,  and  illustrate  the 
country-house  and  the  country  life  of  the  last  age  of 
the  Republic  by  a  rapid  visit  to  Cicero’s  own  villas. 
This  has  fortunately  been  made  easy  for  us  by  the 
very  delightful  work  of  Professor  0.  E.  Schmidt, 
whose  genuine  enthusiasm  for  Cicero  took  him  in 
person  to  all  these  sites,  and  inspired  him  to  write  of 
them  most  felicitously.3 

There  being  no  hotels,  among  which  the  change- 
loving  Roman  of  Cicero’s  day  could  pick  and  choose 
a  retreat  for  a  holiday,  he  would  buy  a  site  for  a 
villa  first  in  one  place,  then  in  another,  or  purchase 
one  ready  built,  or  transform  an  old  farmhouse  of 
his  own  into  a  residence  with  “  modern  requirements.” 
In  choosing  his  sites  he  would  naturally  look  south¬ 
wards,  and  find  what  he  sought  for  either  in  the 
choicer  parts  of  Latium,  among  the  hills  and  woods 
of  the  Mons  Albanus  and  Tusculum,  or  in  the  rich 

1  These  houses,  with  the  coast  on  which  they  stood,  have  long  sunk  into 
the  sea,  and  we  are  only  now,  thanks  to  the  perseverance  of  Mr.  R.  T. 
Gunther  of  Magdalen  College,  realising  their  position  and  former  magnifi¬ 
cence.  See  his  volume  on  Earth  Movements  in  the  Bay  of  Naples. 

2  See  Cic.  pro  Caelio,  §§  48-50. 

3  Cicero’s  Villen,  Leipzig,  1889. 


250 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Campanian  land,  the  paradise  of  the  lazy  Roman  ; 
in  the  latter  case,  he  would  like  to  be  close  to  the 
sea  on  that  delicious  coast,  and  even  in  Latium  there 
were  spots  where,  like  Scipio  and  Laelius,  he  might 
wander  on  the  sea-shore.  All  this  country  to  the 
south  was  beginning  to  be  covered  with  luxurious 
and  convenient  houses  ;  in  the  colder  and  mountain¬ 
ous  parts  of  central  Italy  the  villa  was  still  the 
farmhouse  of  the  older  useful  type,  of  which  the 
object  was  the  cultivation  of  olive  and  vine,  now 
coming  into  fashion,  as  we  have  already  seen.  For 
Cicero  and  his  friends  the  word  villa  no  longer 
suggested  farming,  as  it  invariably  did  for  the  old 
Roman,  and  as  we  find  it  in  Cato’s  treatise  on  agricul¬ 
ture  ;  it  meant  gardens,  libraries,  baths,  and  collections 
of  works  of  art,  with  plenty  of  convenient  rooms 
for  study  or  entertainment.  Sometimes  the  garden 
might  be  extended  into  a  park,  with  fishponds  and 
great  abundance  of  game ;  Hortensius  had  such  a 
park  near  Laurentum,  fifty  jugera  enclosed  in  a  ring- 
fence,  and  full  of  wild  beasts  of  all  sorts  and  kinds. 
Varro  tells  us  that  the  great  orator  would  take  his 
guests  to  a  seat  on  an  eminence  in  this  park,  and 
summon  his  “  Orpheus  ”  thither  to  sing  and  play  :  at 
the  sound  of  the  music  a  multitude  of  stags,  boars, 
and  other  animals  would  make  their  appearance — 
having  doubtless  been  trained  to  do  so  by  expectation 
of  food  prepared  for  them.1  Such  was  the  taste  of 
the  great  master  of  “  Asiatic  ”  eloquence.  We  are 


1  Varro,  R.R.  iii.  13. 


Till 


HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  251 

reminded  of  the  fairy  tale  of  the  Emperor  of  China 
and  the  mechanical  nightingale. 

His  great  rival  in  oratory  had  simpler  tastes,  in 
his  country  life  as  in  his  rhetoric.  Cicero  had  no 
villa  of  the  vulgar  kind  of  luxury ;  he  preferred  to 
own  several  of  moderate  comfort  rather  than  one  or 
two  of  such  magnificence.  He  had  in  all  six,  besides 
one  or  two  properties  which  were  bought  for  some 
special  temporary  object ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  see 
what  relation  these  houses  had  to  his  life  and  habits. 
At  no  point  could  he  afford  to  be  very  far  from  Rome, 
or  from  a  main  road  which  would  take  him  there 
easily.  The  accompanying  little  map  will  show  that 
all  his  villas  lay  on  or  near  to  one  or  other  of  the 
two  great  roads  that  led  southwards  from  the  capital. 
The  via  Latina  would  take  him  in  an  hour  or  two  to 
Tusculum,  where,  since  the  death  of  Catulus  in  68, 
he  owned  the  villa  of  that  excellent  aristocrat.1  The 
site  of  the  villa  cannot  be  determined  with  certainty, 
but  Schmidt  gives  good  reasons  for  believing  that  it 
was  where  we  used  formerly  to  place  it,  on  the  slope 
of  the  hill  above  Frascati.  That  it  really  stood  there, 
and  not  in  the  hollow  by  Grottaferrata,2  we  would 
willingly  believe,  for  no  one  who  has  ever  been  there 
can  possibly  forget  the  glorious  view  or  the  refreshing 
air  of  those  flowery  slopes.  No  wonder  the  owner 
was  fond  of  it.  He  tells  Atticus,  when  he  first  came 

1  The  villa  had  once  been  Sulla’s  also :  and  the  aristocratic  connection 
gave  its  owner  some  trouble.  See  above,  p.  102. 

a  Schmidt,  op.  cit.  p.  31. 


252 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


into  possession  of  it,  that  he  found  rest  there  from 
all  troubles  and  toils  (ad  Att.  i.  5.  7.),  and  again  that 
he  is  so  delighted  with  it  that  when  he  gets  there 
he  is  delighted  with  himself  too  (ad  Att.  i.  6).  Much 
of  his  literary  work  was  done  here,  and  he  had  the 


great  advantage  of  being  close  to  the  splendid  library 
of  Lucullus’  neighbouring  villa,  which  was  always  open 
to  him.1  At  Tusculum  he  spent  many  a  happy  day, 
until  his  beloved  daughter  died  there  in  45,  after 
which  he  would  not  go  there  for  some  time  ;  but  he 
got  the  better  of  this  sorrow,  and  loved  the  place 
to  the  end  of  his  life. 

1  de  Finibus,  iii.  2.  7. 


VIII  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  253 

If  this  villa  was  where  we  hope  it  was,  the  great 
road  passed  at  no  great  distance  from  it,  in  the  valley 
between  Tusculum  and  the  Mons  Albanus ;  and  by 
following  this  for  some  fifty  miles  to  the  south-east 
through  Latium,  Cicero  would  strike  the  river  Liris 
not  far  from  Fregellae,  and  leaving  the  road  there, 
would  soon  arrive  at  his  native  place  Arpinum,  and 
his  ancestral  property.  For  this  old  home  he  always 
had  the  warmest  affection  ;  of  no  other  does  he  write 
in  language  showing  so  clearly  that  his  heart  could 
be  moved  by  natural  beauty,  especially  when  com¬ 
bined  with  the  tender  associations  of  his  boyhood.1 
In  the  charming  introduction  to  the  second  book  of 
his  work  de  Legibus  (on  the  Constitution),  he  dwells 
with  genuine  delight  on  this  feeling  and  these  associa¬ 
tions  ;  and  there  too  we  get  a  hint  of  what  Dr.  Schmidt 
tells  us  is  the  peculiar  charm  of  the  spot, — the 
presence  and  the  sound  of  water ;  for  if  he  is  right, 
the  villa  was  placed  between  two  arms  of  the  limpid 
little  river  Fibrenus,  which  here  makes  a  delta  as  it 
joins  the  larger  Liris.2 

But  of  this  house  we  know  for  certain  neither  the 
site  nor  the  plan,— not  so  much  indeed  as  we  know 
about  a  villa  of  the  brother  Quintus,  not  far  away, 
the  building  of  which  is  described  with  such  exact¬ 
ness  in  a  letter  written  to  the  absent  owner,3  that 
Schmidt  thinks  himself  justified  in  applying  it  by 

1  de  Legibus,  ii.  1. 

2  op.  cit.  p.  15.  I  am  assured  by  a  travelling  friend  that  the  Fibreno 

is  a  delicious  stream.  s  ad  Quint.  Fratr.  iii.  1. 


254 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


analogy  to  the  villa  of  the  elder  brother.  But  such 
reasoning  is  hardly  safe.  What  we  do  know  about 
the  old  house  is  that  it  was  originally  a  true  villa 
rustica, — a  house  with  land  cultivated  by  the  owner, 
that  Cicero’s  father,  who  had  weak  health  and  literary 
tastes,  had  added  to  it  considerably,  and  that  Cicero 
himself  had  made  it  into  a  comfortable  country  resi¬ 
dence,  with  all  necessary  conveniences.  He  did  not 
farm  the  ancestral  land  attached  to  it,  either  himself  or 
by  a  bailiff,  but  let  it  in  small  holdings 1  ( prciediola ), 
and  we  could  wish  that  he  had  told  us  somethin g  of 
his  tenants  and  what  they  did  with  the  land.  It  was 
not,  therefore,  a  real  farmhouse,  but  a  farmhouse  made 
into  a  pleasant  residence,  like  so  many  manor-houses 
still  to  be  seen  in  England.  Its  atrium  had  no  doubt 
retired  (so  to  speak)  into  the  rear  of  the  building, 
and  had  become  a  kitchen,  and  you  entered,  as  in 
most  country-houses  of  this  period,  through  a  vesti¬ 
bule  directly  into  a  peristyle  :  some  idea  of  such  an 
arrangement  may  be  gained  from  the  accompanying 
ground-plan  of  the  villa  of  Diomedes  just  outside 
Pompeii,  which  was  a  city  house  adapted  to  rural 
conditions  (villa  pseudurbana).2 

If  Cicero  wished  to  leave  Arpinum  for  one  of 
his  villas  on  the  Campanian  coast,  he  would  simply 
have  to  follow  the  valley  of  the  Liris  until  it  reached 
the  sea  between  Minturnae  and  Formiae,  and  at 


1  ad  Alt.  xiii.  19.  2. 

2  For  further  details  of  the  amenities  of  the  villa  at  Arpinum  see 
Schmidt,  op.  tit. 


Tin  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  255 


Plan  of  the  Villa  of  Diomedes.  From  Man’s  Pompeii. 


Steps. 

3.  Peristyle. 

8.  Tablinum. 

30.  Exedra. 

12.  Dining-room. 

14.  Sleeping-room,  with  anteroom  (13). 

15.  Passage  leading  to  a  garden  at  the  level 

of  the  street. 

17.  Small  court,  with  hearth  (e)  and 

swimming  tank  (f). 

18.  Store-room. 


19-21.  Bath.  (19.  Apodyterium.  20. 
Tepidarium.  21.  Caldarium.) 

22.  Kitchen. 

2G.  Colonnade,  facing  a  terrace  (28) 
over  the  front  rooms  of  the 
lower  part. 

/>  Si  Colonnade  enclosing  a  large 
garden. 

t,  k,  l,  m.  Rooms. 

r.  Fish-pond. 

.  s.  Arbour. 


256 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  latter  place,  a  lively  little  town  with  charming 
views  over  the  sea,  close  to  the  modern  Gaeta,  he 
would  find  another  house  of  his  own, — the  next  he 
added  to  his  possessions  after  he  inherited  Arpinum. 
Formiae  was  a  very  convenient  spot ;  it  lay  on  the 
via  Appia,  and  was  thus  in  direct  communication 
both  with  Rome  and  the  bay  of  Naples,  either  by 
land  or  sea.  When  Cicero  is  not  resting,  but  on  the 
move  or  expecting  to  be  disturbed,  he  is  often  to  be 
found  at  Formiae,  as  in  the  critical  mid- winter  of 
50-49  B.c.  ;  and  here  at  the  end  of  March  49  he  had 
his  famous  interview  with  Caesar,  who  urged  him  in 
vain  to  accompany  him  to  Rome.  Here  he  spent 
the  last  weary  days  of  his  life,  and  here  he  was 
murdered  by  Antony’s  ruffians  on  December  7,  43. 

This  villa  was  in  or  close  to  the  little  town,  and 
therefore  did  not  give  him  the  quiet  he  liked  to  have 
for  literary  work.  It  would  seem  that  the  bore 
existed  elsewhere  than  at  Rome ;  for  in  a  short  letter 
written  from  Formiae  in  April  59,  he  tells  Atticus  of 
his  troubles  of  this  kind  :  “As  to  literary  work,  it  is 
impossible !  My  house  is  a  basilica  rather  than  a 
villa,  owing  to  the  crowds  of  visitors  from  Formiae. 

.  .  .  C.  Arrius  is  my  next  door  neighbour,  or  rather 
he  almost  lives  in  my  house,  and  even  declares  that 
Ids  reason  for  not  going  to  Rome  is  that  he  may 
spend  whole  days  with  me  here  philosophising.  And 
then,  if  you  please,  on  the  other  flank  is  Sebosus,  that 
friend  of  Catulus  !  Which  way  am  I  to  turn  ?  I 
declare  that  I  would  go  at  once  to  Arpinum,  if  this 


VIII 


HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  257 

were  not  the  most  convenient  place  to  await  your 
visit :  but  I  will  only  wait  till  May  6  :  you  see  what 
bores  are  pestering  my  poor  ears.”  1 

But  his  Campanian  villas  would  be  almost  as 
easy  to  reach  as  Arpinum,  if  he  wished  to  escape 
from  Formiae  and  its  bores.  To  the  nearest  of  these, 
the  one  at  or  near  Cumae,  it  was  only  about  forty 
miles’  drive  along  the  coast  road,  past  Minturnae, 
Sinuessa,  and  Volturnum,  all  familiar  halting-places. 
Of  this  “  Cumanum,”  however,  we  know  very  little  : 
that  volcanic  region  has  undergone  such  changes  that 
we  cannot  recover  the  site,  and  its  owner  never  seems 
to  have  felt  any  particular  attachment  to  it.  It 
was  in  fact  too  near  Baiae  and  Bauli  to  suit  a  quiet 
literary  man  ;  the  great  nobles  in  their  vast  luxurious 
palaces  were  too  close  at  hand  for  a  novus  homo  to 
be  perfectly  at  his  ease  there.  Yet  near  the  end  of 
his  life  Cicero  added  to  his  possessions  another 
property  in  this  neighbourhood,  at  or  near  Puteoli, 
which  was  now  fast  becoming  a  city  of  great  im¬ 
portance  ;  but  this  can  be  explained  by  the  fact  that 
a  banker  of  Puteoli  named  Cluvius,  an  old  friend  of 
his,  had  just  died  and  divided  his  property  by  will 
between  Caesar  and  Cicero, — truly  a  tremendous 
will !  Cicero  seems  to  have  purchased  Caesar’s  share, 
and  to  have  looked  on  the  property  as  a  good 
investment.  He  began  to  build  a  villa  here,  but  had 
little  chance  of  using  it.  It  may  have  been  here  that 
he  entertained  Caesar  and  his  retinue  at  the  end  of 


1  ad  Att.  ii.  14  and  15. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


258 

the  year  45,^8  described  by  him  in  the  famous  letter 
of  December  21  (ad  Att.  xiii.  52) ;  when  two  thousand 
men  had  somehow  to  be  provided  for,  and  in  spite 
of  literary  conversation,  Cicero  could  write  that  his 
guest  was  not  exactly  one  whom  you  would  be  in  a 
hurry  to  see  again. 

Across  the  bay,  and  just  within  view  from  the 
higher  ground  between  Baiae  and  Cumae,  lay  the 
little  town  of  Pompeii,  under  the  sleeping  Vesuvius. 
Here,  probably  just  outside  the  town,  Cicero  had 
a  villa  of  which  he  seems  to  have  been  reallv 

j 

fond,  and  the  society  of  a  quiet  and  gentle  friend, 
M.  Marius.  Whether  we  can  find  the  remains  of  this 
villa  among  the  excavations  of  Pompeii  is  very 
doubtful :  but  our  excellent  guide  Schmidt  assures  us 
that  he  has  good  reason  for  believing  that  one 
particular  house,  just  outside  the  city  on  the  left  side 
of  the  road  in  front  of  the  Porta  Herculanea,  which 
has  for  no  very  convincing  reason  ever  since  its 
excavation  in  1763  been  called  the  Villa  di  Cicerone, 
really  is  the  house  we  wish  it  to  be.  But  alas !  an 
honest  man  must  confess  that  the  identification  wants 
certainty,  and  the  chance  of  finding  any  object  or 
inscription  which  may  confirm  it  is  now  very  small. 

If  Cicero  were  summoned  suddenly  back  to  Rome 
for  business,  forensic  or  political,  he  would  hasten  first 
to  Formiae  and  sleep  there,  and  thence  hurry,  by  the 
via  Appia  and  the  route  so  well  known  to  us  from 

1  O.  E.  Schmidt,  Brie/wechsel  Cicero's,  pp.  66  and  454  ;  but  see  his  Cicero's 
Villen,  p.  46,  note. 


VIII 


HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  259 

Horace’s  journey  to  Brundisium,  to  another  house  in 
the  little  sea-coast  town  of  Antium.  This  was  his 
nearest  seaside  residence,  and  he  often  used  it  when 
unable  to  go  far  from  Rome.  After  the  death  of  his 
daughter  in  45  he  seems  to  have  sold  this  house  to 
Lepidus,  and,  unable  to  stay  at  Tusculum,  where  she 
died,  he  bought  a  small  villa  on  a  little  islet  called 
Astura,  on  the  very  edge  of  the  Pomptine  marshes, 
and  in  that  melancholy  and  unwholesome  neighbour¬ 
hood  he  passed  whole  days  in  the  woods  giving  way 
to  his  grief.  Yet  it  was  a  “  locus  amoenus,  et  in 
mari  ipso,  qui  et  Antio  et  Circeiis  aspici  possit.” 1  It 
suited  his  mood,  and  here  he  stayed  long,  writing 
letter  after  letter  to  Atticus  about  the  erection  of  a 
shrine  to  the  lost  one  in  some  gardens  to  be  purchased 
near  Rome. 

This  sketch  of  the  country-houses  of  a  man  like 
Cicero  may  help  us  to  form  some  idea  of  the  changeful 
life  of  a  great  personage  of  the  period.  He  did  not 
look  for  the  formation  of  steady  permanent  habits  in 
any  one  place  or  house ;  from  an  early  age  he  was 
accustomed  to  travel,  going  to  Greece  or  Asia  Minor 
for  his  “  higher  education,”  acting  perhaps  as  quaestor, 
and  again  as  praetor  or  consul,  in  some  province, 
then  returning  to  Rome  only  to  leave  it  for  one  or 
other  of  his  villas,  and  rarely  settling  down  in 
one  of  these  for  any  length  of  time.  It  was  not 
altogether  a  wholesome  life,  so  far  as  the  mind  was 
concerned ;  real  thought,  the  working  out  of  great 

1  ad  Att.  xii.  19  init. 


260 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


problems  of  philosophy  or  politics,  is  impossible 
under  constant  change  of  scene,  and  without  the 
opportunity  of  forming  regular  habits.1  And  the 
fact  is  that  no  man  at  this  time  seriously  set  him¬ 
self  to  think  out  such  problems.  Cicero  would 
arrive  at  Tusculum  or  Arpinum  with  some  necessary 
books,  and  borrowing  others  as  best  he  could,  would 
sit  down  to  write  a  treatise  on  ethics  or  rhetoric 
with  amazing  speed,  having  an  original  Greek  author 
constantly  before  him.  At  places  like  Baiae  serious 
work  was  of  course  impossible,  and  would  have  been 
ridiculed.  There  was  no  original  thinker  in  this  age. 
Caesar  himself  was  probably  more  suited  by  nature 
to  reason  on  facts  immediately  before  him  than  to 
speculate  on  abstract  principles.  Varro,  the  rough 
sensible  scholar  of  Sabine  descent,  was  a  diligent 
collector  of  facts  and  traditions,  but  no  more  able  to 
grapple  hard  with  problems  of  philosophy  or  theology 
than  any  other  Roman  of  his  time.  The  life  of  the 
average  wealthy  man  was  too  comfortable,  too  change¬ 
able,  to  suggest  the  desirability  of  real  mental  exertion. 

Nor  has  this  life  any  direct  relation  to  material 
usefulness  and  the  productive  investment  of  capital. 
Cicero  and  his  correspondents  never  mention  farming, 
never  betray  any  interest  in  the  new  movement,  if 
such  there  was,  for  the  scientific  cultivation  of  the 
vine  and  olive.2  For  such  things  we  must  go  to 

1  See  Seneca,  Epist.  69,  on  the  disturbing  influence  of  constant  change  of 
scene. 

2  There  is  an  exception  in  the  young  Cicero’s  letter  to  Tiro,  translated 
above,  p.  202. 


via  HOUSE  OF  THE  RICH  MAN  261 

Varro’s  treatise,  written,  some  years  after  Cicero’s 
death,  in  his  extreme  old  age.  In  the  third  book 
of  that  invaluable  work  we  shall  find  all  we  want 
to  know  about  the  real  villa  rustica  of  the  time, — 
the  working  farm-house  with  its  wine- vats  and  olive- 
mills,  like  that  recently  excavated  at  Boscoreale  near 
Pompeii.  Yet  it  would  be  unfair  to  such  men  as 
Cicero  and  his  friends,  the  wiser  and  quieter  section  of 
the  aristocracy,  to  call  their  work  altogether  unpro¬ 
ductive.  True,  it  left  little  permanent  impress  on 
human  modes  of  thought ;  it  wrought  no  material 
change  for  the  better  in  Italy  or  the  Empire.  We 
may  go  so  far  as  to  allow  that  it  initiated  that  habit 
of  dilettantism  which  we  find  already  exaggerated  in 
the  age  lately  illuminated  for  us  by  Professor  Dill  in 
his  book  on  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus 
Aurelius,  and  far  more  exaggerated  in  the  last  age 
of  Roman  society,  which  the  same  author  has  depicted 
in  his  earlier  work.  But  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
under  any  circumstances  the  Romans  could  have 
produced  a  great  prophet  or  a  great  philosopher ; 
and  the  most  valuable  work  they  did  was  of  another 
kind.  It  lay  in  the  humanisation  of  society  by  the 
rational  development  of  law,  and  by  the  communica¬ 
tion  of  Greek  thought  and  literature  to  the  western 
world.  This  was  what  occupied  the  best  days  of 
Cicero  and  Sulpicius  Rufus  and  many  others ;  and 
they  succeeded  at  the  same  time  in  creating  for  its 
expression  one  of  the  most  perfect  prose  languages 
that  the  world  has  ever  known  or  will  know.  They 


262  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME  CHAP.  VIII 

did  it  too,  helping  each  other  by  kindly  and  cheer¬ 
ing  intercourse, — the  humanitas  of  daily  life.  It  is 
exactly  this  humanitas  that  the  northern  mind  of 
Mommsen,  in  spite  of  its  vein  of  passionate  romance, 
could  not  understand ;  all  the  softer  side  of  that 
pleasant  existence  among  the  villas  and  statues  and 
libraries  was  to  him  simply  contemptible.  Let  us 
hope  that  he  has  done  no  permanent  damage  to  the 
credit  of  Cicero,  and  of  the  many  lesser  men  who  lived 
the  same  honourable  and  elegant  life. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  DAILY  LIFE  OF  THE  WELL-TO-DO 

Before  giving  some  account  of  the  way  in  which  a 
Roman  of  consideration  spent  his  day  in  the  time  of 
Cicero,  it  seems  necessary  to  explain  briefly  how  he 
reckoned  the  divisions  of  the  day. 

The  old  Latin  farmer  knew  nothing  of  hours  or 
clocks.  He  simply  went  about  his  daily  work  with 
the  sun  and  the  light  as  guides,  rising  at  or  before 
sunrise,  working  till  noon,  and,  after  a  meal  and  a 
rest,  resuming  his  work  till  sunset.  This  simple 
method  of  reckoning  would  suffice  in  a  sunny 
climate,  even  when  life  and  business  became  more 
complicated ;  and  it  is  a  fact  that  the  division  of 
the  day  into  hours  was  not  known  at  Rome  until 
the  introduction  of  the  sun-dial  in  263  B.c.1  We  may 
well  find  it  hard  to  understand  how  such  business 
as  the  meeting  of  the  senate,  of  the  comitia,  or  the 
exercitus,  could  have  been  fixed  to  particular  times 
under  such  circumstances ;  perhaps  the  best  way  of 
explaining  it  is  by  noting  that  the  Romans  were  very 
early  in  their  habits,  and  that  sunrise  is  a  point  of 

1  Censorinus,  De  die  natali,  23.  6. ;  Pliny,  N.  E.  vii.  213.  On  the  whole 
subject  of  the  division  of  the  day  see  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  246  foil. 

263 


CHAP. 


264  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

time  about  which  there  can  be  no  mistake.1  But  in 
any  case  the  date  of  the  introduction  of  the  sun-dial, 
which  almost  exactly  corresponds  with  the  beginning 
of  the  Punic  wars  and  the  vast  increase  of  civil 
business  arising  out  of  them,  may  suggest  at  once' 
the  primitive  condition  of  the  old  Roman  mind  and 
habit,  and  the  way  in  which  the  Romans  had  to  learn 
from  other  peoples  how  to  save  and  arrange  the  time 
that  was  beginning  to  be  so  piecious. 

This  first  sun-dial  came  from  Catina  in  Sicily,  and 
was  therefore  quite  unsuited  to  indicate  the  hours  at 
Rome.  Nevertheless  Rome  contrived  to  do  with  it 
until  nearly  a  century  had  elapsed  ;  at  last,  in  159  b.c., 
a  dial  calculated  on  the  latitude  of  Rome  was  placed 
by  the  side  of  it  by  the  censor  Q.  Marcius  Philippus. 
These  two  dials  were  fixed  on  pillars  behind  the 
Rostra  in  the  Forum,  the  most  convenient  place  for 
regulating  public  business,  and  there  they  remained 
even  in  the  time  of  Cicero.2  But  in  the  censorship 
next  following  that  of  Philippus  the  first  water-clock 
was  introduced  ;  this  indicated  the  hours  both  of  day 
and  night,  and  enabled  every  one  to  mark  the  exact 
time  even  on  cloudy  days.3 

Thus  from  the  time  of  the  Punic  wars  the  city  popu¬ 
lation  reckoned  time  by  hours,  i.e.  twelve  divisions 
of  the  day  ;  but  as  they  continued  to  reckon  the  day 

1  In  the  XII  Tables  only  sunrise  and  sunset  were  mentioned  (Pliny,  l.c. 
212).  Later  on  noon  was  proclaimed  by  the  Consul’s  marshal  (Varro,  de  Ling. 
Lat.  vi.  5),  and  also  the  end  of  the  civil  day.  Cp.  Varro,  L.L.  vi.  89. 

2  Cic.  pro  Quinctio,  18.  59. 

3  See  the  article  “Horologium”  in  Did.  of  Antiquities,  vol.  i. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  265 


from  sunrise  to  sunset  on  the  principle  of  the  old 
agricultural  practice,  these  twelve  hours  varied  in 
length  at  different  times  of  the  year.  In  mid-winter 
the  hours  were  only  about  forty -four  minutes  in 
length,  while  at  mid-summer  they  were  about  seventy- 
five,  and  they  corresponded  with  ours  only  at  the  two 
equinoxes.1  This,  of  course,  made  the  construction 
of  accurate  dials  and  water-clocks  a  matter  of  con¬ 
siderable  difficulty.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  explain 
how  the  difficulties  were  overcome ;  the  reader  may 
be  referred  to  the  article  “  Horologium  ”  in  the 
Dictionary  of  Antiquities,  and  especially  to  the 
cuts  there  given  of  the  dial  found  at  Tusculum 
in  1761. 2 

Sun-dials,  once  introduced  with  the  proper  reckon¬ 
ing  for  latitude,  soon  came  into  general  use,  and  a 
considerable  number  still  survive  which  have  been 
found  in  Rome.  In  a  fragment  of  a  comedy  by  an 
unknown  author,  ascribed  to  the  last  century  b.c., 
Rome  is  described  as  “  full  of  sun-dials,”  3  and  many 
have  been  discovered  in  other  Roman  towns,  including 

1  Our  modern  hours  are  called  equinoctial,  because  they  are  fixed  at  the 
length  of  the  natural  hour  at  the  equinoxes.  This  system  does  not  seem 
to  have  come  in  until  late  in  the  Empire  period. 

2  For  the  water-clock  see  Marquardt,  op.  cit.  p.  773  foil. 

3  The  lines  are  so  good  that  I  may  venture  to  quote  them  in  full  from 
Gell.  iii.  3  (cp.  Ribbeck,  Fragm.  Comicorum,  ii.  p.  34) :  “  parasitus  esuriens 
dicit : 

Ut  ilium  di  perdant  primus  qui  horas  reppsrit, 

Quique  adeo  primus  statuit  hie  solarium. 

Qui  mihi  comminuit  misero  articulatim  diem, 

Nam  olim  me  puero  venter  erat  solarium, 

Multo  omnium  istorum  optimum  et  verissimum  : 


266 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


several  at  Pompeii.  But  for  the  ordinary  Roman, 
who  possessed  no  sun-dial  or  was  not  within  reach  of 
one,  the  day  fell  into  four  convenient  divisions,  as 
with  us  it  falls  into  three, — morning,  afternoon,  and 
evening.  As  they  rose  much  earlier  than  we  do, 
the  hours  up  to  noon  were  divided  into  two  parts : 
(1)  mane,  or  morning,  which  lasted  from  sunrise  to 
the  beginning  of  the  third  hour,  and  (2)  ad  meridiem, 
or  forenoon  ;  then  followed  de  meridie,  i.e.  afternoon, 
and  suprema,  from  about  the  ninth  or  tenth  hour 
till  sunset.  The  authority  for  these  handy  divisions 
is  Censorinus,  De  die  natali  (23.  9,  24.  3).  There 
seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  they  originated  in  the 
management  of  civil  business,  and  especially  in  that 
of  the  praetor’s  court,  which  normally  began  at  the 
third  hour,  i.e.  the  beginning  of  ad  meridiem,  and 
went  on  till  the  suprema  (tempestas  diei),  which 
originally  meant  sunset,  but  by  a  lex  Plaetoria 
was  extended  to  include  the  hour  or  two  before 
dark. 

The  first  thing  to  note  in  studying  the  daily  life  at 
Rome  is  that  the  Romans,  like  the  Greeks,  were  busy 
much  earlier  in  the  morning  than  we  are.  In  part 
this  was  the  result  of  their  comfortable  southern 
climate,  where  the  nights  are  never  so  long  as  with 

Ubivis  ste  monebat  esse,  nisi  quom  nihil  erat. 

Nunc  etiam  quom  est,  non  estur,  nisi  soli  libet. 

Itaque  adeo  iam  oppletum  oppidum  est  solariis, 

Maior  pars  populi  iam  aridi  reptant  fame.” 

The  fourth  line  contains  a  truth  of  human  nature,  of  which  illustrations 
might  easily  be  found  at  the  present  day. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  267 

us,  and  where  the  early  mornings  are  not  so  chilly 
and  damp  in  summer  or  so  cold  in  winter.  But  it 
was  probably  still  more  the  effect  of  the  very  imper¬ 
fect  lighting  of  houses,  which  made  it  difficult  to 
carry  on  work,  especially  reading  and  writing,  after 
dark,  and  suggested  early  retirement  to  bed  and 
early  rising  in  the  morning.  The  streets,  we  must 
remember,  were  not  lighted  except  on  great  occa¬ 
sions,  and  it  was  not  till  late  in  Roman  history  that 
public  places  and  entertainments  could  be  frequented 
after  dark.  In  early  times  the  oil-lamp  with  a  wick 
was  unknown,  and  private  houses  were  lighted  by 
torches  and  rude  candles  of  wax  or  tallow.1  The 
introduction  of  the  use  of  olive  oil,  which  was  first 
imported  from  Greece  and  the  East  and  then  pro¬ 
duced  in  Italy,  brought  with  it  the  manufacture  of 
lamps  of  various  kinds,  great  and  small ;  and  as  the 
cultivation  of  the  valuable  tree,  so  easily  grown  in 
Italy,  increased  in  the  last  century  b.c.,2  the  oil-lamp 
became  universal  in  houses,  baths,  etc.  Even  in  the 
small  old  baths  of  Pompeii  there  were  found  about 
a  thousand  lamps,  obviously  used  for  illumination 
after  dark.3  But  in  spite  of  this  and  of  the  inven¬ 
tion  of  candelabra  for  extending  the  use  of  candles, 
it  was  never  possible  for  the  Roman  to  turn  night 
into  day  as  we  do  in  our  modern  town -life.  We 
must  look  on  the  lighting  of  the  streets  as  quite  an 

1  Pliny,  N.H.  xv.  1  foil,  supplies  the  history  of  the  oil  industry.  For 
the  candles  see  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  690. 

a  See  above,  p.  93.  3  Marq.  Privatleben,  p.  264. 


268 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


exceptional  event.  This  happened,  for  example,  on 
the  night  of  the  famous  fifth  of  December  63  b.c., 
when  Cicero  returned  to  his  house  after  the  execution 
of  the  conspirators ;  people  placed  lamps  and  torches 
at  their  doors,  and  women  showed  lights  from  the 
roofs  of  the  houses. 

An  industrious  man,  especially  in  winter,  when 
this  want  of  artificial  light  made  time  most  valu¬ 
able,  would  often  begin  his  work  before  daylight ;  he 
might  have  a  speech  to  prepare  for  the  senate,  or  a 
brief  for  a  trial,  or  letters  to  write,  and,  as  we  shall 
see,  as  soon  as  the  sun  had  well  risen  it  was  not 
likely  that  he  would  be  altogether  his  own  master. 
Thus  we  find  Cicero  on  a  February  morning  writing 
to  his  brother  before  sunrise,1  and  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  the  soreness  of  the  eyes  of  which  he  sometimes 
complains  may  have  been  the  result  of  reading  and 
writing  before  the  light  was  good.  In  his  country 
villas  he  could  do  as  he  liked,  but  at  Rome  he  knew 
that  he  would  have  the  “turba  salutantium”  upon  him 
as  soon  as  the  sun  had  risen.  Cicero  is  the  only  man 
of  his  own  time  of  whose  habits  we  know  much,  but 
in  the  next  generation  Horace  describes  himself  as 
calling  for  pen  and  paper  before  daylight,  and  later 
on  that  insatiable  student  the  elder  Pliny  would 
wrork  for  hours  before  daylight,  and  then  go  to  the 
Emperor  Vespasian,  who  was  also  a  very  early  riser.2 
After  sunrise  the  whole  population  was  astir ;  boys 

1  Cic.  ad  Q.F.  ii.  3.  7.  For  the  lippitudo,  ad  Att.  vii.  14. 

2  Hor.  Epist.  ii.  1.  112  ;  Pliny,  Ep.  iii.  5,  8,  9. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  269 

were  on  their  way  to  school,  and  artisans  to  their 
labour. 

If  Horace  is  not  exaggerating  when  he  says  (Sat. 
i.  1.  10)  that  the  barrister  might  be  disturbed  by  a 
client  at  cock-crow,  Cicero’s  studies  may  have  been 
interrupted  even  before  the  crowds  came ;  but  this 
could  hardly  happen  often.  As  a  rule  it  was  during 
the  first  two  hours  (mane)  that  callers  collected.  In 
the  old  times  it  had  been  the  custom  to  open  your 
house  and  begin  your  business  at  daybreak,  and  after 
saluting  your  familia  and  asking  a  blessing  of  the 
household  gods,  to  attend  to  your  own  affairs  and 
those  of  your  clients.1  Although  we  are  not  told  so 
explicitly,  we  must  suppose  that  the  same  practice 
held  good  in  Cicero’s  time ;  under  the  Empire  it  is 
familiar  to  all  readers  of  Seneca  or  Martial,  but  in  a 
form  which  was  open  to  much  criticism  and  satire. 
The  client  of  the  Empire  was  a  degraded  being ;  of 
the  client  in  the  last  age  of  the  Republic  we  only 
know  that  he  existed,  and  could  be  useful  to  his 
patronus  in  many  ways, — in  elections  and  trials 
especially ; 2  but  we  do  not  hear  of  his  pressing 
himself  on  the  attention  of  his  patron  every  morn¬ 
ing,  or  receiving  any  “  sportula.”  All  the  same,  the 
number  of  persons,  whether  clients  in  this  sense  or 

1  Hor.  Epist.  ii.  1.  103  :  “  Romae  dulce  diu  fuit  et  solenne  reclusa  Mane 
domo  vigilare,  clienti  promere  iura  ”  etc.  It  is  curious  that  all  our  informa¬ 
tion  on  this  early  business  comes  from  the  literature  of  the  Empire.  The 
single  passage  of  Cicero  which  Marquardt  could  find  to  illustrate  it  unluckily 
relates  to  his  practice  as  governor  of  Cilicia  ( ad  Att.  vi.  2.  5). 

2  e.g.  ad  Q.F.  i.  2.  16. ;  and  Q.  Cic.  Commentariolum  petitionis,  sec.  17. 


27  o 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


in  the  legal  sense,  or  messengers,  men  of  business, 
and  ordinary  callers,  who  would  want  to  see  a  man 
like  Cicero  before  he  left  his  house  in  the  morning, 
would  beyond  doubt  be  considerable.  Otherwise 
they  would  have  to  catch  him  in  the  street  or 
Forum ;  and  though  occasionally  a  man  of  note 
might  purposely  walk  in  public  in  order  to  give 
his  clients  their  chance,  Cicero  makes  it  plain  that 
this  was  not  his  way.1 

Within  these  two  first  hours  of  daylight  the  busy 
man  had  to  find  time  for  a  morning  meal ;  the  idle 
man,  who  slept  later,  might  postpone  it.  This  early 
breakfast,  called  ientaculum ,2  answered  to  the  “  coffee 
and  roll  ”  which  is  usual  at  the  present  day  in  all 
European  countries  except  our  own,  and  which  is 
fully  capable  of  supporting  even  a  hard-working 
man  for  several  hours.  It  is,  indeed,  quite  possible 
to  do  work  before  this  breakfast ;  Antiochus,  the 
great  doctor,  is  said  by  Galen  to  have  visited  such 
of  his  patients  as  lived  near  him  before  his  breakfast 
and  on  foot.3  But  as  a  rule  the  meal  was  taken 
before  a  busy  man  went  out  to  his  work,  and 
consisted  of  bread,  either  dipped  in  wine  or  eaten 
with  honey,  olives,  or  cheese.  The  breakfast  of 

1  See  what  he  says  of  M’.  Manilius  in  De  Orat.  iii.  133. 

2  The  word  seems  to  be  connected  with  ieiunium  (Plaut.  Curculio  I.  i. 
73  ;  Festus,  p.  346),  and  thus  answers  to  our  break/ast.  The  verb  is  ientare  : 
Afranius  :  fragm.  “ientare  nulla  invitat.” 

3  Galen,  vol.  vi.  p.  332.  I  take  this  citation  from  Marquardt,  Privatleben, 
p.  257  ;  others  will  be  found  in  the  notes  to  that  page.  Marquardt  seems 
to  have  been  the  first  to  bring  the  evidence  of  the  medical  writers  to  bear 
on  the  subject  of  Roman  meals. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  271 

Antiochus  consisted,  for  example,  of  bread  and  Attic 
honey. 

The  meal  over,  the  man  of  politics  or  business 
would  leave  his  house,  outside  which  his  clients  and 
friends  or  other  hangers-on  would  be  waiting  for  him, 
and  proceed  to  the  Forum,— -the  centre,  as  we  have 
seen,  of  all  his  activity  —  accompanied  by  these 
people  in  a  kind  of  procession.  Some  would  go 
before  to  make  room  for  him,  while  others  followed 
him ;  if  bent  on  election  business,  he  would  have 
experienced  helpers,1  either  volunteers  or  in  his  pay, 
to  save  him  from  making  blunders  as  to  names  and 
personalities,  and  in  fact  to  serve  him  in  conducting 
himself  towards  the  populace  with  the  indispensable 
blanditia .2  Every  Roman  of  importance  liked  to 
have,  and  usually  had,  a  train  of  followers  or  friends 
in  descending  to  the  Forum  of  a  morning  from  his 
house,  or  in  going  about  other  public  business ;  what 
Q.  Cicero  urges  on  his  brother  in  canvassing  for  the 
consulship  may  hold  good  in  principle  for  all  the  public 
appearances  of  a  public  man, — “  I  press  this  strongly 
on  you,  always  to  be  with  a  multitude.”3  It  may 
perhaps  be  paralleled  with  the  love  of  the  Roman 
for  processions,  e.g.  the  lustrations  of  farm,  city, 
and  army,4  and  with  his  instinctive  desire  for  aid 
and  counsel  in  all  important  matters  both  of  public 
and  private  life,  shown  in  the  consilium  of  the 

1  See  the  interesting  account  of  these  (salutatores,  deductores,  assecta- 
tores)  in  the  Commentariolum  petitionis  of  Q.  Cicero,  9.  34  foil. 

2  See  above,  p.  109.  3  Q.  Cicero,  Comment.  Pet.  9.  37. 

4  See  the  author’s  Roman  Festivals,  pp.  125  foil. 


272 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


paterfamilias  and  of  the  magistrate.  Examples  are 
easy  to  find  in  the  literature  of  this  period ;  an  ex¬ 
cellent  one  is  the  graphic  picture  of  Gaius  Gracchus 
and  his  train  of  followers,  which  Plutarch  has  pre¬ 
served  from  a  contemporary  writer.  “  The  people 
looked  with  admiration  on  him,  seeing  him  attended 
by  crowds  of  building-contractors,  artificers,  ambas¬ 
sadors,  magistrates,  soldiers,  and  learned  men,  to  all 
of  whom  he  was  easy  of  access  ;  while  he  maintained 
his  dignity,  he  was  gracious  to  all,  and  suited  his 
behaviour  to  the  condition  of  every  individual ;  thus 
he  proved  the  falsehood  of  those  who  called  him 
tyrannical  or  arrogant.”  1 

Arrived  at  the  Forum,  if  not  engaged  in  a  trial, 
or  summoned  to  a  meeting  of  the  senate,  or  busy 
in  canvassing,  he  would  mingle  with  the  crowd,  and 
spend  a  social  morning  in  meeting  and  talking  with 
friends,  or  in  hearing  the  latest  news  from  the 
provinces,  or  in  occupying  himself  with  his  invest¬ 
ments  with  the  aid  of  his  bankers  and  agents.  This 
is  the  way  in  which  such  a  sociable  and  agreeable 
man  as  Cicero  was  loved  to  spend  his  mornings 
when  not  deep  in  the  composition  of  some  speech 
or  book, — and  at  Rome  it  was  indeed  hardly  possible 
for  him  to  find  the  time  for  steady  literary  work.  It 
was  this  social  life  that  he  longed  for  when  in  Cilicia ; 
“  one  little  walk  and  talk  with  you,”  he  could  write 
to  Caelius  at  Rome,  “  is  worth  all  the  profits  of  a 
province.”  2  But  it  was  also  this  crowded  and  talka- 

1  Plutarch,  C.  Gracchus ,  6.  2  Cic.  ad  Fam.  ii.  12. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  273 

tive  Forum  that  Lucilius  could  describe  in  a  passage 
already  quoted,  as  teeming  with  men  who,  with  the 
aid  of  hypocrisy  and  blanditia,  spent  the  day. from 
morning  till  night  in  trying  to  get  the  better  of  their 
fellows.1 

After  a  morning  spent  in  the  Forum,  our  Roman 
might  return  home  in  time  for  his  lunch  ( prandium ), 
which  had  taken  the  place  of  the  early  dinner  ( cena ) 
of  the  olden  time.  Exactly  the  same  thing  affected 
the  hours  of  these  meals  as  has  affected  those  of  our 
own  within  the  last  century  or  so  ;  the  great  increase 
of  public  business  of  all  kinds  has  with  us  pushed 
the  time  of  the  chief  meal  later  and  later,  and  so  it 
was  at  Rome.  The  senate  had  an  immense  amount 
of  business  to  transact  in  the  two  last  centuries  b.c., 
and  the  increase  in  oratorical  skill,  as  well  as  the 
growing  desire  to  talk  in  public,  extended  its  sittings 
sometimes  till  nightfall.2  So  too  with  the  law-courts, 
which  had  become  the  scenes  of  oratorical  display, 
and  often  of  that  indulgence  in  personal  abuse  which 
has  great  attractions  for  idle  people  fond  of  excite¬ 
ment.  Thus  the  dinner  hour  had  come  to  be  post¬ 
poned  from  about  noon  to  the  ninth  or  even  the 
tenth  hour,3  and  some  kind  of  a  lunch  was  necessary. 
We  do  not  hear  much  of  this  meal,  which  was  in  fact 
for  most  men  little  more  than  the  “snack”  which 

1  Fragm.  9.  Baehrens,  Fragm.  Poet.  Bom.  p.  141.  Cp.  Galen,  vol.  x.  p.  3 
(Kuhn). 

2  Livy  xlv.  36  ;  Cic.  ad  Fam.  i.  2  ;  for  a  famous  case  of  “obstruction” 
by  lengthy  speaking,  Gell.  iv.  10. 

3  Festus,  p.  54. 

T 


274 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


London  men  of  business  will  take  standing  at  a  bar  : 
nor  do  we  know  whether  senators  and  barristers  took 
it  as  they  sat  in  the  curia  or  in  court,  or  whether 
there  was  an  adjournment  for  purposes  of  refreshment. 
Such  an  adjournment  seems  to  have  taken  place, 
occasionally  at  least,  during  the  games  under  the 
Empire,  for  Suetonius  [Claud.  34)  tells  us  that 
Claudius  would  dismiss  the  people  to  take  their 
prandium  and  yet  remain  himself  in  his  seat.  A 
joke  of  Cicero’s  about  Caninius  Rebilus,  who  was 
appointed  consul  by  Caesar  on  the  last  day  of  the 
year  45  at  one  o’clock,  shows  that  the  usual  hour 
for  the  prandium  was  about  noon  or  earlier ;  “  under 
the  consulship  of  Caninius,”  he  wrote  to  Curius,  “  no 
one  ever  took  luncheon.”  1 

After  the  prandium,  if  a  man  w'ere  at  home  and 
at  leisure,  followed  the  siesta  ( meridiatio ).  This  is 
the  universal  habit  in  all  southern  climates,  especially 
in  summer  and  indeed,  if  the  mind  and  body  are 
active  from  an  early  hour,  a  little  repose  is  useful, 
if  not  necessary,  after  mid-day.  Busy  men  how¬ 
ever  like  Cicero  could  not  always  afford  it  in  the 
city,  and  we  find  him  noting  near  the  end  of  his 
life,  when  Caesar’s  absolutism  had  diminished  the 
amount  of  his  work  both  in  senate  and  law-courts, 
that  he  had  taken  to  the  siesta  which  he  formerly 
dispensed  with.2  Even  the  sturdy  Varro  in  his  old 
age  declared  that  in  summer  he  could  not  possibly 


1  ad  Farru  vii.  30. 

•  dt  Divinatione,  ii.  142,  written  in  44  B.o. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  275 

do  without  his  nap  in  the  middle  of  the  day.1  On 
the  other  hand,  in  the  famous  letter  in  which  Cicero 
describes  his  entertainment  of  Caesar  in  mid-winter 
45  B.c.,  nothing  is  said  of  a  siesta ;  the  Dictator 
worked  till  after  mid-day,  then  walked  on  the  shore, 
and  returned,  not  for  a  nap  but  for  a  bath.2 

Caesar,  as  he  was  Cicero’s  guest,  must  have  taken 
his  bath  in  the  villa,  probably  that  at  Cumae  (see 
above,  p.  257).  Most  well-appointed  private  houses 
had  by  this  time  a  bath-room  or  set  of  bath-rooms, 
providing  every  accommodation,  according  to  the 
season  and  the  tas>oe  of  the  bather.  This  was  indeed 
a  modern  improvement ;  in  the  old  days  the  Romans 
only  washed  their  arms  and  legs  daily,  and  took  a 
bath  every  market-day,  i.e.  every  ninth  day.  This  is 
told  us  in  an  amusing  letter  of  Seneca’s,  who  also 
gives  a  description  of  the  bath  in  the  villa  of  the 
elder  Scipio  at  Liternum,  which  consisted  of  a  single 
room  without  a  window,  and  was  supplied  with  water 
which  was  often  thick  after  rain.8  “  Nesciit  vivere,” 
says  Seneca,  in  ironical  allusion  to  the  luxury  of  his 
own  day.  In  Cicero’s  time  every  villa  doubtless  had 
its  set  of  baths,  with  at  least  three  rooms, — the 
apodyterium,  caldarium,  and  tepidarium,  sometimes 
also  an  open  swimming-bath,  as  in  the  House  of  the 

1  Varro,  R.R.  i.  2 ;  the  words  are  put  into  the  mouth  of  one  of  the 
speakers  in  the  dialogue.  See,  for  examples  from  later  writers,  Marq., 
Privatleben,  p.  262. 

2  ad  Att.  xiii.  52  ;  the  habit  may  have  often  been  dropped  in  winter. 

3  Seneca,  Ep.  86.  The  whole  passage  is  most  interesting,  as  illustrating 
the  difference  in  habits  wrought  in  the  course  of  two  centuries. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


276 

Silver  Wedding  at  Pompeii.1  In  Cicero’s  letter  to 
his  brother  about  the  villa  at  Arcanum,  he  mentions 
the  dressing-room  (apodyterium)  and  the  caldarium 
or  hot-air  chamber,  and  doubtless  there  were  others. 
Even  in  the  villa  rustica  of  Boscoreale  near  Pompeii, 
which  was  a  working  farm-house,  we  find  the  bath¬ 
rooms  complete,  provided,  that  is,  with  the  three 
essentials  of  dressing-room,  tepid-room,  and  hot-air 
room.2  Caesar  probably,  as  it  was  winter,  used  the 
last  of  these,  took  in  fact  a  Turkish  bath,  as  we  should 
call  it,  and  then  went  into  a  tepidarium,  where,  as 
Cicero  tells  us,  he  received  some  messenger.  Here 
he  was  anointed  (unctus),  i.e.  rubbed  dry  from  per¬ 
spiration,  with  a  strigil  on  which  oil  was  dropped 
to  soften  its  action.3  When  this  operation  was  over, 
about  the  ninth  hour,  which  in  mid-winter  would 
begin  about  half-past  one,  he  was  ready  for  the 
dinner  which  followed  immediately.4 

1  Mau,  Pompeii,  p.  300.  See  above,  p.  244. 

2  See  the  plan  in  Mau,  p.  357  ;  Marquardt,  Privatleben,  p.  272. 

3  See  Professor  Purser’s  explanation  and  illustrations  in  the  Diet,  of 
Antiquities,  vol.  i.  p.  278. 

4  The  subject  of  the  public  baths  at  Rome  properly  belongs  to  the  period 
of  the  Empire,  and  is  too  extensive  to  be  treated  in  a  chapter  on  the  daily 
life  of  the  Roman  of  Cicero’s  time.  Public  baths  did  exist  in  Rome  already, 
but  we  hear  very  little  of  them,  which  shows  that  they  were  not  as  yet  an 
indispensable  adjunct  of  social  life  ;  but  the  fact  that  Seneca  in  the  letter 
already  quoted  describes  the  aediles  as  testing  the  heat  of  the  water  with 
their  hands  shows  (1)  that  the  baths  were  public,  (2)  that  they  were  of  hot 
water  and  not,  as  later,  of  hot  air  (thermae).  The  latter  invention  is  said  to 
have  come  in  before  the  Social  war  (Val.  Max.  ix.  1.  1.).  Some  baths  seem 
to  have  been  run  as  a  speculation  by  private  individuals,  and  bore  the 
name  of  their  builder  (e.g.  balneae  Seniae,  Cic.  pro  Cael.  25.  61).  In 
summer  the  young  men  still  bathed  in  the  Tiber  (pro  Cael.  15.  36).  At 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  2 77 

This  we  may  take  as  the  ordinary  winter  dinner- 
hour  in  the  country ;  in  summer  it  would  be  an 
hour  or  so  later.  In  an  amusing  story  given  as  a 
rhetorical  illustration  in  the  work  known  as  Rlietorica 
ad  Herennium ,  iv.  63,  the  guests  (doomed  never  to 
get  their  dinner  that  day  except  in  an  inn)  are  invited 
for  the  tenth  hour.  But  in  the  city  it  must  have 
often  happened  that  the  hour  was  later,  owing  to  the 
press  of  business.  For  example,  on  one  occasion  when 
the  senate  had  been  sitting  ad  noctem,  Cicero  dines  with 
Pompeius  after  its  dismissal  ( ad  Fam.  i.  2. 3).  Another 
day  we  find  him  going  to  bed  after  his  dinner,  and 
clearly  not  for  a  siesta,  which,  as  we  saw,  he  never 
had  time  to  take  in  his  busy  days  ;  this,  however,  was 
not  actually  in  Rome  but  in  his  villa  at  Formiae, 
where  he  was  at  that  time  liable  to  much  interrup¬ 
tion  from  callers  (ad  Att.  ii.  16).  Probably,  like  most 
Romans  of  his  day,  he  had  spent  a  long  time  over  his 
dinner,  talking  if  he  had  guests,  or  reading  and 
thinking  if  he  were  alone  or  with  his  family  only. 

The  dinner,  cena ,  was  in  fact  the  principal  private 
event  of  the  day ;  it  came  when  all  business  was 
over,  and  you  could  enjoy  the  privacy  of  family  life 
or  see  your  friends  and  unbend  with  them.  At  no 
other  meal  do  we  hear  of  entertainment,  unless  the 
guests  were  on  a  journey,  as  was  the  case  at  the 
lunch  at  Arcanum  when  Pomponia’s  temper  got 
the  better  of  her  (see  above,  p.  52).  Even  dinner- 


Pompeii  tlie  oldest  public  baths  (the  Stabian  ;  Mau,  p.  183)  date  from  the 
second  century  b.c. 


CHAP. 


278  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

parties  seem  to  have  come  into  fashion  only  since 
the  Punic  wars,  with  later  hours  and  a  larger  staff 
of  slaves  to  cook  and  wait  at  table.  In  the  old  days 
of  household  simplicity  the  meals  were  taken  in  the 
atrium,  the  husband  reclining  on  a  lectus,1  the  wife 
sitting  by  his  side,  and  the  children  sitting  on  stools 
in  front  of  them.  The  slaves  too  in  the  olden  time 
took  their  meal  sitting  on  benches  in  the  atrium,  so 
that  the  whole  familia  was  present.  This  means  that 
the  dinner  was  in  those  days  only  a  necessary  break 
in  the  intervals  of  work,  and  the  sitting  posture  was 
always  retained  for  slaves,  i.e.  those  who  would  go 
about  their  work  as  soon  as  the  meal  was  over. 
Columella,  writing  under  the  early  Empire,  urges 
that  the  vilicus  or  overseer  should  sit  at  his  dinner 
except  on  festivals ;  and  Cato  the  younger  would 
not  recline  after  the  battle  of  Pharsalia  for  the  rest 
of  his  life,  apparently  as  a  sign  that  life  was  no  longer 
enjoyable.2 

But  after  the  Second  Punic  war,  which  changed  the 
habits  of  the  Roman  in  so  many  ways,  the  atrium 
ceased  to  be  the  common  dining-place,  and  special 
chambers  were  built,  either  off  the  atrium  or  in  the 
interior  part  of  the  house  about  the  peristylium,  or 
even  upstairs,  for  the  accommodation  of  guests,  who 
might  be  received  in  different  rooms,  according  to  the 
season  and  the  weather.3  These  triclinia  were  so 

1  The  tradition  was  that  the  paterfamilias  originally  also  sat  instead  of 
reclining.  See  Marq.  Privatleben,  p.  292  note  3. 

2  Columella,  ii.  1.  19,  a  very  interesting  chapter  ;  Plutarch,  Cato  min.  56. 

*  Plut.  Lucullus  40  ;  see  above,  p.  242. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  279 

arranged  as  to  afford  the  greatest  personal  comfort 
and  the  best  opportunities  for  conversation ;  they 
indicate  clearly  that  dinner  is  no  longer  an  interval 
in  the  day’s  work,  but  a  time  of  repose  and  ease  at 
the  end  of  it.  The  plan  here  given  of  a  triclinium,  as 
described  by  Plutarch  in  his  Quaestiones  conviviales. 


Plan  of  a  Tricltnittm:. 


will  show  this  sufficiently  without  elaborate  descrip¬ 
tion  ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  notice  that  the  host 
always  or  almost  always  occupied  the  couch  marked 
H  on  the  plan,  while  the  one  immediately  above  him, 
i.e.  No.  3  of  the  lectus  medius,  was  reserved  for  the 
most  important  guest,  and  called  lectus  consularis. 
Plutarch’s  account,  and  a  little  consideration,  will 
show  that  the  host  was  thus  well  placed  for  the 
superintendence  of  the  meal,  as  well  as  for  conversa¬ 
tion  with  his  distinguished  guest ;  and  that  the  latter 


28o 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


occupied  what  Plutarch  calls  a  free  corner,  so  that  any 
messengers  or  other  persons  needing  to  see  him  could 
get  access  to  him  without  disturbing  the  party.1 
The  number  that  could  be  accommodated,  nine,  was 
not  only  a  sacred  and  lucky  one,  but  exactly  suited 
for  convenience  of  conversation  and  attendance. 
Larger  parties  were  not  unheard  of,  even  under  the 
Republic,  and  Vitruvius  tells  us  that  some  dining¬ 
rooms  were  fitted  with  three  or  more  triclinia  ;  but  to 
put  more  than  three  guests  on  a  single  couch,  and  so 
increase  the  number,  was  not  thought  courteous  or 
well-bred.  Among  the  points  of  bad  breeding  which 
Cicero  attributes  to  his  enemy  Calpurnius  Piso,  the 
consul  of  58,  one  was  that  he  put  five  guests  to 
recline  on  a  single  couch,  while  himself  occupying  one 
alone ;  so  Horace  : 

Saepe  tribus  lectis  videas  cenare  quaternos.2 

As  the  guests  were  made  so  comfortable,  it  may 
be  supposed  that  they  were  not  in  a  hurry  to  depart ; 
the  mere  fact  that  they  were  reclining  instead  of 
sitting  would  naturally  dispose  them  to  stay.  The 
triclinia  were  open  at  one  end,  i.e.  not  shut  up  as 
our  dining-rooms  are,  and  the  air  would  not  get  close 
and  “  dinnery.”  Cicero  describes  old  Cato 3  (no  doubt 
from  some  passage  in  Cato’s  writings)  as  remaining 
in  conversation  at  dinner  until  late  at  night.  The 
guests  would  arrive  with  their  slaves,  who  took  off 

1  Plut.  Quaest.  Conv.  1.  3  foil.  ;  and  Marq.  p.  295. 

1  Hor.  Sat.  i.  4.  86  ;  cp.  Cic.  in  Pisonem,  27.  67. 
s  Cic.  de  Senect.  14.  46. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  281 


their  walking  shoes,  if  they  had  come  on  foot,  and 
put  on  their  sandals  ( soleae ) :  each  wore  a  festive 
dress  [synthesis),  of  Greek  origin  like  the  other 
features  of  the  entertainment,  and  there  was  no 
question  of  changing  these  again  in  a  hurry.  Nothing 
can  better  show  the  difference  between  the  old  Roman 
manners  and  the  new  than  the  character  of  these 
parties ;  they  are  the  leisurely  and  comfortable 
rendezvous  of  an  opulent  and  educated  society,  in 
which  politics,  literature  or  philosophy  could  be  dis¬ 
cussed  with  much  self-satisfaction.  That  such  dis¬ 
cussion  did  not  go  too  deeply  into  hard  questions  was 
perhaps  the  result  of  the  comfort. 

There  was  of  course  another  side  to  this  picture 
of  the  evening  of  a  Roman  gentleman.  There  was 
a  coarse  side  to  the  Roman  character,  and  in  the 
age  when  wealth,  the  slave  trade,  and  idle  habits 
encouraged  self-indulgence,  meals  were  apt  to  become 
ends  in  themselves  instead  of  necessary  aids  to  a 
wholesome  life.  The  ordinary  three  parts  or  courses 
( mensae )  of  a  dinner, — the  gustatio  or  light  preliminary 
course,  the  cena  proper,  with  substantial  dishes,  and 
the  dessert  of  pastry  and  fruit,  could  be  amplified 
and  extended  to  an  unlimited  extent  by  the  skill  of 
the  slave-cooks  brought  from  Greece  and  the  East 
(see  above,  p.  209) ;  the  gourmand  had  appeared  long 
before  the  age  of  Cicero  and  had  been  already  satirised 
by  Lucilius  and  Varro.1  Splendid  dinner-services 

1  Lucilius,  fragm.  30  ;  120  foil.  ;  168,  327  etc.  Varro  wrote  a  Menippean 
satire  on  gluttony,  of  which  a  fragment  is  preserved  by  Gellius,  vi.  16. 


282 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


might  take  the  place  of  the  old  simple  ware,  and 
luxurious  drapery  and  rugs  covered  the  couches, 
instead  of  the  skins  of  animals,  as  in  the  old  time.1 
Vulgarity  and  ostentation,  such  as  Horace  satirised, 
were  doubtless  too  often  to  be  met  with.  Those 
who  lived  for  feasting  and  enjoyment  would  invite 
their  company  quite  early  in  the  day  (tempestativum 
convivium)  and  carry  on  the  revelry  till  midnight.2 
And  lastly,  the  practice  of  drinking  wine  after  dinner 
( comissatio ),  simply  for  the  sake  of  drinking,  under 
fixed  rules  according  to  the  Greek  fashion,  familiar 
to  us  all  in  the  Odes  of  Horace,  had  undoubtedly 
begun  some  time  before  the  end  of  the  Republic.  In 
the  Actio  prima  of  his  Verrine  orations  Cicero  gives 
a  graphic  picture  of  a  convivium  beginning  early, 
where  the  proposal  was  made  and  agreed  to  that  the 
drinking  should  be  “  more  graeco.”  3 

But  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that 
this  kind  of  self-indulgence  was  characteristic  of  the 
average  Roman  life  of  this  age.  The  ordinary  student 
is  liable  to  fall  into  this  error  because  he  reads  his 
Horace  and  his  Juvenal,  but  dips  a  very  little  way 
into  Cicero’s  correspondence ;  and  he  needs  to  be 
reminded  that  the  satirists  are  not  deriding  the 
average  life  of  the  citizen,  any  more  than  the  artists 
who  make  fun  of  the  foibles  of  our  own  day  in  the 
pages  of  Punch.  Cicero  hardly  ever  mentions  his 

1  See  the  interesting  passage  in  Cic.  pro  Murena,  36.  75,  about  the 
funeral  feast  of  Scipio  Aemilianus. 

2  Catull.  47.  5  :  “  vos  convivia  lauta  sumptuose  De  die  facitis  1” 

*  26.  65  foil.  ;  Hor.  Od.  iii.  19,  and  the  commentators. 


IX 


DAILY  LIFE  OF  WELL-TO-DO  283 

meals,  his  cookery,  or  his  wine,  even  in  his  most 
chatty  letters ;  such  matters  did  not  interest  him, 
and  do  not  seem  to  have  interested  his  friends,  so 
far  as  we  can  judge  by  their  letters.  In  one  amusing 
letter  to  Poetus,  he  does  indeed  tell  him  what  he 
had  for  dinner  at  a  friend’s  house,  but  only  by  way 
of  explaining  that  he  had  been  very  unwell  from 
eating  mushrooms  and  such  dishes,  which  his  host 
had  had  cooked  in  order  not  to  contravene  a  recent 
sumptuary  law.1  The  Letters  are  worth  far  more  as 
negative  evidence  of  the  usual  character  of  dinners 
than  either  the  invectives  (vituperationes)  against 
a  Piso  or  an  Antony,  or  the  lively  wit  of  the 
satirists.  Let  us  return  for  an  instant,  in  conclusion, 
to  that  famous  letter,  already  quoted,  in  which  Cicero 
describes  the  entertainment  of  Caesar  at  Cumae  in 
December,  45.  It  contains  an  expression  which  has 
given  rise  to  very  mistaken  conclusions  both  about 
Caesar’s  own  habits  and  those  of  his  day.  After 
telling  Atticus  that  his  guest  sat  down  to  dinner 
when  the  bath  was  over  he  goes  on:  “ ’EyueTt/c^i/ 
agebat ;  itaque  et  edit  et  bibit  dSew?  et  iucunde, 
opipare  sane  et  apparate,  nec  id  solum,  sed 

bene  cocto 

condito,  sermone  bono,  et  si  quaeri’,  libenter.” 

Even  good  scholars  used  formerly  to  make  the 

3  ad  Fam.  vii.  26,  of  tbe  year  57  b.c.  The  sumptuary  law  must  have 
been  a  certain  lex  Aemilia  of  later  date  than  Sulla.  (See  Gell.  ii.  24  : 
“qua  lege  non  sumptus  cenarum,  sed  ciborum  genus  et  modus  praefinitus 
est.”)  This  chapter  of  Gellius,  and  Macrob.  iii.  17,  are  the  safest  passages  to 
consult  on  the  subject  of  the  growth  of  gounnandism. 


CHAP.  IX 


284  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

mistake  of  supposing  that  Caesar,  a  man  habitually 
abstemious,  or  at  least  temperate,  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  over-eat  himself  on  this  occasion,  as  he  was 
intending  to  take  an  emetic  afterwards.  And  even 
now  it  may  be  as  well  to  point  out  that  medical 
treatment  by  a  course  of  emetics  was  a  perfectly 
well  known  and  valued  method  at  this  time ; 1  that 
Caesar,  whose  health  was  always  delicate,  and  at 
this  time  severely  tried,  was  then  under  this  treat¬ 
ment,  and  could  therefore  eat  his  dinner  com¬ 
fortably,  without  troubling  himself  about  what  he 
ate  and  drank :  and  that  the  apt  quotation  from 
Lucilius,  and  the  literary  conversation  which  (so 
Cicero  adds)  followed  the  dinner,  prove  beyond  all 
question  that  this  was  no  glutton’s  meal,  but  one  of 
that  ordinary  and  rational  type,  in  which  repose  and 
pleasant  intercourse  counted  for  more  than  the  mere 
eating  and  drinking. 

No  more  work  seems  to  have  been  done  after  the 
cena  was  over  and  the  guests  had  retired.  We  found 
Cicero  on  one  occasion  going  to  bed  soon  after  the 
meal ;  and,  as  he  was  up  and  active  so  early  in  the 
morning,  we  may  suppose  that  he  retired  at  a  much 
earlier  hour  than  we  do.  But  of  this  last  act  of  the 
day  he  tells  us  nothing. 


1  See  Mimro,  Elucidations  of  Catullus,  p.  92  folL 


CHAPTER  X 


HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS 

The  Italian  peoples,  of  all  races,  have  always  had 
a  wonderful  capacity  for  enjoying  themselves  out 
of  doors.  The  Italian  festa  of  to-day,  usually,  as  in 
ancient  times,  linked  to  some  religious  festival,  is  a 
scene  of  gaiety,  bright  dresses,  music,  dancing,  bon¬ 
fires,  races,  and  improvisation  or  mummery ;  and  all 
that  we  know  of  the  ancient  rural  festivals  of  Italy 
suggests  that  they  were  of  much  the  same  lively  and 
genial  character.  Tibullus  gives  us  a  good  idea 
of  them : 

“Agricola  assiduo  primum  satiatus aratro 
Cantavit  certo  rustica  verba  pede  ; 

Et  satur  arenti  primum  est  modulatus  avena 
Carmen,  ut  ornatos  diceret  ante  deos  ; 

Agricola  et  minio  suffusus,  Baccbe,  rubenti 

Primus  inexperta  duxit  ab  arte  choros.”1 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  examples  of  such 
merry-making  from  the  poets  of  the  Augustan  age, 

1  Tibull.  ii.  1.  51  foil.  Cp.  ii.  5.  83  foil.  Several  are  also  described  by 
Ovid  in  his  Fasti.  A  charming  account  of  fcste  in  a  Tuscan  village  of  to¬ 
day  will  be  found  in  A  Nook  in  the  Apennines,  by  Leader  Scott,  chapters 
xxviii.  and  xxix.  :  a  book  full  of  value  for  Italian  rural  life,  ancient  and 
modern. 


285 


286 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


nearly  all  of  whom  were  born  and  bred  in  the  country, 
and  shared  Virgil’s  tenderness  for  a  life  of  honest 
work  and  play  among  the  Italian  hills  and  valleys. 
But  in  this  chapter  we  are  to  deal  with  the  holidays 
and  enjoyments  of  the  great  city,  and  the  rural 
festivals  are  only  mentioned  here  because  almost  all 
the  characteristics  of  the  urban  holiday-making  are 
to  be  found  in  germ  there.  The  Roman  calendar  of 
festivals  has  its  origin  in  the  regularly  recurring  rites 
of  the  earliest  Latin  husbandman.  As  the  city  grew, 
these  old  agricultural  festivities  lost  of  course  much 
of  their  native  simplicity  and  naivete  ;  some  of  them 
survived  merely  as  religious  or  priestly  performances, 
some  became  degraded  into  licentious  enjoyment ; 
but  the  music  and  dancing,  the  gay  dresses,  the 
racing,  the  mumming  or  acting,  are  all  to  be  found 
in  the  city,  developed  in  one  form  or  another,  from 
the  earliest  to  the  latest  periods  of  Roman  history. 

The  Latin  word  for  a  holiday  was  feriae,  a  term 
which  belongs  to  the  language  of  religious  law  {ius 
divinum).  Strictly  speaking,  it  means  a  day  which 
the  citizen  has  resigned,  either  wholly  or  in  part,  to 
the  service  of  the  gods.1  As  of  old  on  the  farm  no 
work  was  to  be  done  on  such  days,  so  in  the  city  no 
public  business  could  be  transacted.  Cicero,  drawing 
up  in  antique  language  his  idea  of  the  ius  divinum, 
writes  thus  of  feriae  :  “  Feriis  iurgia  amovento,  easque 
in  familiis,  operibus  patratis,  habento  ”  :  which  he 

1  Wissowa,  j Religion  und  Kultus,  p.  366.  “Feriae”  came  in  time  to  be 
limited  to  public  festivals,  while  “  festus  dies  ”  covered  all  holidays. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  287 

afterwards  explains  as  meaning  that  the  citizen  must 
abstain  from  litigation,  and  the  slave  be  excused 
from  labour.1  The  idea  then  of  a  holiday  was  much 
the  same  as  we  find  expressed  in  the  Jewish  Sabbath, 
and  had  its  root  also  in  religious  observance.  But 
Cicero,  whether  he  is  actually  reproducing  the  words 
of  an  old  law  or  inventing  it  for  himself,  was  certainly 
not  reflecting  the  custom  of  the  city  in  his  own  day ; 
no  such  rigid  observance  of  a  rule  was  possible  in  the 
capital  of  an  Empire  such  as  the  Roman  had  become. 
Even  on  the  farm  it  had  long  ago  been  found 
necessary  to  make  exceptions  ;  thus  Virgil  tells  us  : 2 

“  Quippe  etiam  festis  quaedam  exercere  dielms 
Fas  et  iura  sinunt :  rivos  deducere  nulla 
Religio  vetuit,  segeti  praetendere  saepem, 

Insidias  avibus  moliri,  incendere  vepres, 

Balantumque  gregem  fluvio  mersare  salubri.” 

So  too  in  the  city  it  was  simply  impossible  that  all 
work  should  cease  on  feriae,  of  which  there  were 
more  than  a  hundred  in  the  year,  including  the  Ides 
of  every  month  and  some  of  the  Kalends  and  Nones. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  a  double  change  had  come 
about  since  the  city  and  its  dominion  began  to 
increase  rapidly  about  the  time  of  the  Punic  wars. 
First,  many  of  the  old  festivals,  sacred  to  deities 
whose  vogue  was  on  the  wane,  or  who  had  no  longer 
any  meaning  for  a  city  population,  as  being  deities 
of  husbandry,  were  almost  entirely  neglected :  even 
if  the  priests  performed  the  prescribed  rites,  no  one 

1  de  Legibus,  ii.  8.  19  :  cp.  12.  29. 

a  Georg,  i.  268  foil.  Cato  had  already  said  the  same  thing  :  K.H.  ii.  4. 


288 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


knew  and  no  one  cared,1  and  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  State  was  at  all  scrupulous  in  adhering 
to  the  old  sacred  rules  as  to  the  hours  on  which 
business  could  be  transacted  on  such  days.2  Secondly, 
certain  festivals  which  retained  their  popularity  had 
been  extended  from  one  day  to  three  or  more,  in 
one  or  two  cases,  as  we  shall  see,  even  to  thirteen  and 
fifteen  days,  in  order  to  give  time  for  an  elaborate 
system  of  public  amusement  consisting  of  chariot- 
races  and  stage -plays,  and  known  by  the  name  of 
ludi,  or,  as  at  the  winter  Saturnalia,  to  enable  all 
classes  to  enjoy  themselves  during  the  short  days 
for  seven  mornings  instead  of  one.  Obviously  this 
was  a  much  more  convenient  and  popular  arrange¬ 
ment  than  to  have  your  holidays  scattered  about 
over  the  whole  year  as  single  days  ;  and  it  suited  the 
rich  and  ambitious,  who  sought  to  obtain  popular 
favour  by  shows  and  games  on  a  grand  scale, 
needing  a  succession  of  several  days  for  complete 
exhibition.  So  the  old  religious  word  feriae  be¬ 
comes  gradually  supplanted,  in  the  sense  of  a  public 
holiday  of  amusement,  by  the  word  ludi ,  and  came 
at  last  to  mean,  as  it  still  does  in  Germany,  the 
holidays  of  schoolboys.3  These  ludi  will  form  the 
chief  subject  of  this  chapter ;  but  wTe  must  first 


1  Thus  Ovid  describes  the  rites  performed  by  the  Flamen  Quirinalis  at 
the  old  agricultural  festival  of  the  Robigalia  (Robigus,  deity  of  the  mildew) 
as  if  it  were  a  curious  bit  of  old  practice  which  most  people  knew  nothing 
about. — Fasti,  iv.  901  foil. 

2  Greenidge,  Legal  Procedure  in  Cicero's  time,  p.  457. 

3  It  is  the  same  word  as  our  fair. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  289 

mention  one  or  two  of  the  old  feriae  which  seem 
always  to  have  remained  occasions  of  holiday -making, 
at  any  rate  for  the  lower  classes  of  the  population. 

One  of  these  occurred  on  the  Ides  of  March,  and 
must  have  been  going  on  at  the  moment  when  Caesar 
was  assassinated  in  44  B.c.  It  was  the  festival  of  Anna 
Perenna,  a  mysterious  old  deity  of  “  the  ring  of  the 
year.”  The  lower  class  of  the  population,  Ovid  tells 
us,1  streamed  out  to  the  “  festum  geniale  ”  of  Anna, 
and  spent  the  whole  day  in  the  Campus  Martius, 
lying  about  in  pairs  of  men  and  women,  indulging  in 
drinking  and  all  kinds  of  revelry.  Some  lay  in  the 
open  ;  some  constructed  tents,  or  rude  huts  of  boughs, 
stretching  their  togas  over  them  for  shelter.  As 
they  drank  they  prayed  for  as  many  years  of  life  as 
they  could  swallow  cups  of  wine.  The  usual  charac¬ 
teristics  of  the  Italian  festa  were  to  be  found  there : 
they  sang  anything  they  had  picked  up  in  the  theatre, 
with  much  gesticulation  (“  et  iactant  faciles  ad  sua 
verba  manus  ”),  and  they  danced,  the  women  letting 
down  their  long  hair.  The  result  of  these  perform¬ 
ances  was  naturally  that  they  returned  home  in  a 
state  of  intoxication,  which  roused  the  mirth  of  the 
bystanders.  Ovid  adds  that  he  had  himself  met  them 
so  returning,  and  had  seen  an  old  woman  pulling  along 
an  old  man,  both  of  them  intoxicated.  There  may  have 
been  other  popular  “jollifications”  of  this  kind,  for 
example  at  the  Neptunalia  on  July  23,  where  we  find 
the  same  curious  custom  of  making  temporary  huts 

1  Fasti,  iii.  523  foil.  ;  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  51. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


290 

or  shelters  ; 1  but  this  is  the  only  one  of  which  we 
have  any  account  by  an  eye-witness.  Of  the  famous 
Lupercalia  in  February,  and  some  other  festivals 
which  neither  died  out  altogether  nor  were  con¬ 
verted  into  ludi,  we  only  know  the  ritual,  and 
cannot  tell  whether  they  wTere  still  used  as  popular 
holidays. 

One  famous  festival  of  the  old  religious  calendar 
did,  however,  always  remain  a  favourite  holiday, 
viz.  the  Saturnalia  on  December  17,  which  was  by 
common  usage  extended  to  seven  days  in  all.2  It 
was  probably  the  survival  of  a  mid-winter  festivity 
in  the  life  of  the  farm,  at  a  time  when  all  the  farm 
work  of  the  autumn  was  over,  and  when  both  bond 
and  free  might  indulge  themselves  in  unlimited 
enjoyment.  Such  ancient  customs  die  hard,  or,  as 
was  the  case  with  the  Saturnalia,  never  die  at  all ; 
for  the  same  features  are  still  to  be  found  in  the 
Christmas  rejoicings  of  the  Italian  peasant.  Every 
one  knows  something  of  the  character  of  this  holi¬ 
day,  and  especially  of  the  entertainment  of  slaves  by 
their  masters,3  wThich  has  many  parallels  in  Greek 
custom,  and  has  been  recently  supposed  to  have  been 
borrowed  from  the  Greeks.  Various  games  were 
played,  and  among  them  that  of  “  King,”  at  which 
we  have  seen  the  young  Cato  playing  with  his  boy 

1  Roman  Festivals,  p.  185.  The  custom  doubtless  had  a  religious  origin. 

2  lb.  p.  268.  Augustus  limited  the  days  to  three. 

*  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus,  p.  170.  The  cult  of  Saturn  was  largely 
affected  by  Greek  usage,  but  this  particular  custom  was  more  likely  descended 
from  the  usage  of  the  Latin  farm. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  291 

companions.1  Seneca  tells  us  that  in  his  day  all 
Rome  seemed  to  go  mad  on  this  holiday. 

But  we  must  now  turn  to  the  real  ludi,  organised 
by  the  State  on  a  large  and  ever  increasing  scale. 
The  oldest  and  most  imposing  of  these  were  the 
Ludi  Romani  or  Magni,  lasting  from  September  5 
to  September  19  in  Cicero’s  time.  These  had  their 
origin  in  the  return  of  a  victorious  army  at  the  end 
of  the  season  of  war,  when  king  or  consul  had  to 
carry  out  the  vows  he  had  made  when  entering  on  his 
campaign.  The  usual  form  of  the  vow  was  to  enter¬ 
tain  the  people  on  his  return,  in  honour  of  Jupiter, 
and  thus  they  were  originally  called  ludi  votivi, 
before  they  were  incorporated  as  a  regularly  recur¬ 
ring  festival.  After  they  became  regular  and  annual, 
any  entertainment  vowed  by  a  general  had  to  take 
place  on  other  days;  thus  in  the  year  70  B.c. 
Pompey’s  triumphal  ludi  votivi  immediately  pre¬ 
ceded  the  Ludi  Romani  of  that  year,2  giving  the 
people  in  all  some  thirty  days  of  holiday.  The 
centre-point,  and  original  day,  of  the  Ludi  Romani 
was  the  Ides  (13th)  of  September,  which  was  also 
the  day  of  the  epulum  Jovis,3  and  the  dies  natalis 
(dedication  day)  of  the  Capitoline  temple  of  J upiter  ; 
and  the  whole  ceremonial  was  closely  connected  with 

1  See  above,  p.  172.  Marquardt,  Privatlelen,  p.  586  ;  Frazer,  Golden 

Bough  (ed.  2),  vol.  iii.  p,  138  foil. 

3  Cic.  Verr.  I.  10.  31  ;  where  Cicero  complains  of  the  difficulties  he 
experienced  in  conducting  his  case  in  consequence  of  the  number  of  ludi 
from  August  to  November  in  that  year. 

*  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  217  foil. 


292 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


that  temple  and  its  great  deity.  The  triumphal 
procession  passed  along  the  Sacra  via  to  the  Capitol, 
and  thence  again  to  the  Circus  Maximus,  where  the 
ludi  were  held.  The  show  must  have  been  most 
imposing ;  first  marched  the  boys  and  youths,  on  foot 
and  on  horseback,  then  the  chariots  and  charioteers 
about  to  take  part  in  the  racing,  with  crowds  of 
dancers  and  flute-players,1  and  lastly  the  images  of 
the  Capitoline  deities  themselves,  carried  on  fercula 
(biers).  All  such  shows  and  processions  were  dear  to 
the  Roman  people,  and  this  seems  to  have  become  a 
permanent  feature  of  the  Ludi  Romani,  whether  or 
no  an  actual  triumph  was  to  be  celebrated,  and  also 
of  some  other  ludi,  e.g.  the  Apollinares  and  the 
Megalenses.2  Thus  the  idea  was  kept  up  that  the 
greatness  and  prosperity  of  Rome  were  especially  due 
to  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus,  who,  since  the  days  of 
the  Tarquinii,  had  looked  down  on  his  people  from 
his  temple  on  the  Capitol.3 

The  Ludi  Plebeii  in  November  seem  to  have  been 
a  kind  of  plebeian  duplicate  of  the  Ludi  Romani. 
As  fully  developed  at  the  end  of  the  Republic,  they 
lasted  from  the  4th  to  the  17th ;  their  centre- 
point  and  original  day  was  the  Ides  (13th),  on  which, 
as  on  September  13,  there  was  an  epulum  Jovis  in 

1  See  the  account  in  Dion.  Hal.  vii.  72,  taken  from  Fabius  Pictor. 

2  See  Friedlander  in  Marquardt,  Staatsverwaltung,  iii.  p.  508,  note  3. 

8  For  full  accounts  of  this  procession,  and  the  whole  question  of  the  Ludi 
Romani,  see  Friedlander,  l.c. ;  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus,  p.  383  foil. ;  or 
the  article  “  Triumphus  ”  in  the  Diet,  of  Antiquities,  ed.  2.  All  accounts  owe 
much  to  Mommsen’s  essay  in  Romische  Forschungen,  ii.  p.  42  foil. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  293 

the  Capitol.1  They  are  connected  with  the  name  of 
that  Flaminins  who  built  the  circus  Flaminius  in  the 
Campus  Martius  in  220  B.c.,  the  champion  of  popular 
rights,  killed  soon  afterwards  at  Trasimene ;  and  it 
is  probable  that  his  object  in  erecting  this  new  place 
of  entertainment  was  to  provide  a  convenient  build¬ 
ing  free  of  aristocratic  associations.  But  unfortunately 
we  know  very  little  of  the  history  of  these  ludi. 

If  we  may  suppose  that  the  Ludi  Plebeii  were 
instituted  just  before  the  second  Punic  war,  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  three  other  great  ludi  were 
organised  in  the  course  of  that  war,  no  doubt  with 
the  object  of  keeping  up  the  drooping  spirits  of  the 
urban  population.  The  Ludi  Apollinares  wrere  vowed 
by  a  praetor  urbanus  in  212,  when  the  fate  of  Rome 
was  hanging  in  the  balance,  and  celebrated  in  the 
Circus  Maximus :  in  208  they  were  fixed  to  a 
particular  day,  July  13,  and  eventually  extended 
to  eight,  viz.  July  6-1 3. 2  In  204  were  instituted 
the  Ludi  Megalenses,  to  celebrate  the  arrival  in 
Rome  of  the  Magna  Mater  from  Pessinus  in  Phrygia, 
i.e.  on  April  4 ;  but  the  ludi  were  eventually  ex¬ 
tended  to  April  10.3  Lastly,  in  202  the  Ludi  Ceriales, 
which  probably  existed  in  some  form  already,  were 
made  permanent  and  fixed  for  April  19  :  they  eventu¬ 
ally  lasted  from  the  12th  to  the  19th.4  After  the 
war  was  over  we  only  find  one  more  set  of  ludi  per- 

1  On  the  parallelism  between  the  Ludi  Plebeii  and  Romani  see  Mommsen, 
Staatsrecht,  ii.  p.  508,  note  4. 

2  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  179  foil.  8  lb.  p.  69.  4  lb.  p.  72  foil. 


294 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


manently  established,  viz.  the  Florales,  which  date 
from  173.  The  original  day  was  April  28,  which  had 
long  been  one  of  coarse  enjoyment  for  the  plebs  ;  like 
the  other  ludi,  these  too  were  extended,  and  eventu¬ 
ally  reached  to  May  3.1  April,  we  may  note,  was  a 
month  chiefly  consisting  of  holidays  :  the  Ludi  Mega¬ 
lenses,  Ceriales,  and  Florales  occupied  no  less  than 
seventeen  of  its  twenty-nine  days. 

When  Sulla  wished  to  commemorate  his  victory 
at  the  Colline  gate,  he  instituted  Ludi  Victoriae  on 
November  1,  the  date  of  the  battle,  and  these  seem 
to  have  been  kept  up  after  most  of  Sulla’s  work  had 
been  destroyed ;  they  are  mentioned  by  Cicero  in 
the  passage  quoted  above  from  the  Yerrines,  as  Ludi 
Victoriae,  but  we  hear  comparatively  little  of  them. 

Before  we  go  on  to  describe  the  nature  of  these 
numerous  entertainments,  it  may  be  as  well  to  realise 
that  the  spectators  had  nothing  to  pay  for  them ; 
they  were  provided  by  the  State  free  of  cost,  as  being 
part  of  certain  religious  festivals  which  it  was  the  duty 
of  the  government  to  keep  up.  Certain  sums  were 
set  aside  for  this  purpose,  differing  in  amount  from 
time  to  time ;  thus  in  217  b.c.,  for  the  Ludi  Romani, 
on  which  up  to  that  time  200,000  sesterces  (£16,600) 
had  been  spent,  the  sum  of  333,  333^  sest.  was  voted, 
because  the  number  three  had  a  sacred  signification, 
and  the  moment  wras  one  of  extreme  peril  for  the  State.2 
On  one  occasion  only  before  the  end  of  the  Republic 
do  we  hear  of  any  public  collection  for  the  ludi ; 

1  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  91  foil.  2  Livy  xxii.  10.  7  ;  Dionys.  vii.  71. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  295 

in  186  B.c.  Pliny  tells  us  that  every  one  was  so  well 
off,  owing  no  doubt  to  the  enormous  amount  of  booty 
brought  from  the  war  in  the  East,  that  all  subscribed 
some  small  sum  for  the  games  of  Scipio  Asiaticus.1 
There  was  no  doubt  a  growing  demand  for  magni¬ 
ficence  in  the  shows,  and  thus  it  came  about  that 
the  amount  provided  by  the  State  had  to  be 
supplemented.  But  the  usual  way  of  supplementing 
it  was  for  the  magistrate  in  charge  of  the  ludi  to  pay 
what  he  could  out  of  his  own  purse,  or  to  get  his 
friends  to  help  him ;  and  as  all  the  ludi  except  the 
Apollinares  were  in  charge  of  the  aediles,  it  became 
the  practice  for  these,  if  they  aspired  to  reach  the 
praetorship  and  consulship,  to  vie  with  each  other  in 
the  recklessness  of  their  expenditure.  As  early  as 
176  B.c.  the  senate  had  tried  to  limit  this  personal 
expenditure,  for  Ti.  Sempronius  Gracchus  as  aedile  had 
that  year  spent  enormous  sums  on  his  ludi,  and  had 
squeezed  money  (it  does  not  appear  how)  out  of  the 
subject  populations  of  Italy,  as  well  as  the  provinces, 
to  entertain  the  Roman  people.2  But  naturally  no 
decrees  of  the  senate  on  such  matters  were  likely 
to  have  permanent  effect ;  the  great  families  whose 
younger  members  aimed  at  popularity  in  this  way 
were  far  too  powerful  to  be  easily  checked.  In  the 
last  age  of  the  Republic  it  had  become  a  necessary 
part  of  the  aedile’s  duty  to  supplement  the  State’s 
contribution,  and  as  a  rule  he  had  to  borrow  heavily, 

1  Pliny,  N.H.  xxxiii.  138.  The  same  thing  happened  once  or  twioe 
under  Augustus.  3  Livy  xl.  44. 


CHAP. 


296  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

and  thus  to  involve  himself  financially  quite  early  in 
his  political  career.  In  his  de  Officiis,1  writing  of  the 
virtue  of  liberalitas,  Cicero  gives  a  list  of  men  who 
had  been  munificent  as  aediles,  including  the  elder 
and  younger  Crassus,  Mucius  Scaevola  (a  man,  he 
says,  of  great  self-restraint),  the  two  Luculli, 
Hortensius,  and  Silanus ;  and  adds  that  in  his  own 
consulship  P.  Lentulus  outdid  all  his  predecessors,  and 
was  imitated  by  Scaurus  in  58  b.c.2  Cicero  himself 
had  to  undertake  the  Ludi  Romani,  Megalenses,  and 
Florales  in  his  aedileship ;  how  he  managed  it 
financially  he  does  not  tell  us.3  Caesar  undoubtedly 
borrowed  largely,  for  his  expenditure  as  aedile  was 
enormous,4  and  he  had  no  private  fortune  of  an} 
considerable  amount. 

Our  friend  Caelius  Rufus  was  elected  curule  aedile 
while  he  was  in  correspondence  with  Cicero,  and  his 
letters  give  us  a  good  idea  of  the  condition  of  the 
mind  of  an  ambitious  young  man  who  is  bent  on 
making  the  most  of  himself.  He  is  in  a  continual 
state  of  fidget  about  his  games ;  he  has  set  his  heart 
on  getting  panthers  to  exhibit  and  hunt,  and  urges 
Cicero  in  letter  after  letter  to  procure  them  for  him 
in  Cilicia.  “  It  will  be  a  disgrace  to  you,”  he  writes 
in  one  of  them,  “  that  Patiscus  has  sent  ten  panthers 
to  Curio,  and  that  you  should  not  send  me  ten  times 

1  ii.  16,  57  foil. 

2  We  have  some  details  of  the  ridiculously  lavish  expenditure  of  this 
aedile  in  Pliny,  N.H.  xxxvi.  114.  He  built  a  temporary  theatre,  which  was 
decorated  as  though  it  were  to  be  a  permanent  monument  of  magnificence. 

s  Verr.  v.  14.  36.  *  Plut.  Caes.  5. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  29; 

as  many.”  1  The  provincial  governor,  he  urges,  can 
do  what  he  pleases  ;  let  Cicero  send  for  some  men  of 
Cibyra,let  him  write  to  Pamphylia,  where  they  are  most 
abundant,  and  he  will  get  what  he  wants,  or  rather 
what  Caelius  wants.  Even  after  a  letter  full  of  the 
most  important  accounts  of  public  business,  including 
copies  of  senatus  consulta  (ad  Fam.  viii.  8),  he  harks 
back  at  the  end  to  the  inevitable  panthers.  Cicero  tells 
Atticus  that  he  rebuked  Caelius  for  pressing  him  thus 
hard  to  do  what  his  conscience  could  not  approve, 
and  that  it  was  not  right,  in  his  opinion,  for  a 
provincial  governor  to  set  the  people  of  Cibyra 
hunting  for  panthers  for  Roman  games.2  From  the 
same  passage  it  would  seem  that  Caelius  had  also 
been  urging  him  to  take  other  steps  in  his  province  of 
which  he  disapproved,  no  doubt  with  the  same  object 
of  raising  money  for  the  ludi.  This  letter  to  Caelius 
is  not  extant,  but  we  may  believe  that  Cicero  had 
the  courage  to  reprove  his  old  pupil,  and  that  the 
constant  worrying  for  panthers  was  more  than  even 
his  amiability  could  stand.  But  others  were  less 
sensitive ;  and  it  is  a  well  known  fact  in  natural 
history  that  the  Roman  games  had  a  powerful  effect, 
from  this  time  forwards,  in  diminishing  the  numbers 
of  wild  animals  in  the  countries  bordering  on  the 
Mediterranean,  and  in  bringing  about  the  extinction 
of  species.  In  our  own  day  the  same  work  is  carried 
on  by  the  big -game  sportsman,  somewhat  farther 
afield ;  the  pleasure  of  slaughter  being  now  confined 

2  ad  Att.  vi.  1.  21. 


1  Cic.  ad  Fam.  viii.  9. 


298 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


to  the  few  rich  and  adventurous,  who  shoot  for  their 
own  delectation,  and  not  to  make  a  London  holiday. 

Thus  to  all  his  ludi  the  citizen  had  the  right  of 
admission  free  of  cost.1  An  Englishman  may  find 
some  difficulty  at  first  in  realising  this  ;  it  is  as  if 
cricket  and  football  matches  and  theatres  in  London 
were  open  to  the  public  gratis,  and  the  cost  provided 
by  the  London  County  Council.  Yet  it  is  not 
difficult  to  understand  how  the  Roman  government 
drifted  into  a  practice  which  was  eventually  found  to 
have  such  unfortunate  results.  It  has  already  been 
explained  that  ludi  were  originally  attached  to  certain 
religious  festivals,  which  it  was  the  duty  of  the  State 
and  its  priests  and  magistrates  to  maintain.  The 
Romans,  like  all  Italians,  loved  shows  and  out-of- 
door  enjoyment,  and  as  the  population  increased  and 
became  more  liable  to  excitement  during  the  stress  of 
the  great  wars  with  Carthage,  it  became  necessary  to 
keep  them  cheerful  and  in  good  humour  by  developing 
the  old  ludi  and  instituting  new  ones,  for  which  it 
would  have  been  contrary  to  all  precedent  to  make 
them  pay.  The  government,  as  we  may  guess  from 
the  history  of  the  ludi  which  has  just  been  sketched, 
seems  to  have  been  careful  at  first  not  to  go  too  far 
with  this  policy,  and  it  was  some  time  before  any  ludi 
but  the  Romani  were  made  annual  and  extended  to 
the  length  they  eventually  reached.  But  the  sudden 

1  There  is  no  evidence  that  slaves  were  admitted  under  the  Republic. 
Columella,  who  wrote  under  Nero,  is  the  first  to  mention  their  presence  at 
the  games  (Ji.Ix.  i.  8.  2),  unless  we  consider  the  vilicus  of  Horace,  Epist. 
i.  14.  15,  as  a  slave.  See  Friedlander  in  Marq.  p.  491,  note  4. 


X 


HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  299 


increase  of  wealth  after  the  great  struggle  was  over 
was  answerable  for  this,  as  for  so  many  other 
damaging  tendencies.  We  have  seen  that  the  people 
themselves  in  186  were  able  and  willing  to  contribute  ; 
and  now  it  was  possible  for  aediles  to  invest  their 
capital  in  popular  undertakings  which  might,  later 
on,  pay  them  well  by  carrying  them  on  to  higher 
magistracies  and  provincial  governorships,  where  fresh 
fortunes  might  be  made.  The  evil  results  are,  of 
course,  as  obvious  here  as  in  the  parallel  case  of  the 
corn-supply  (see  above,  p.  34) ;  enormous  amounts  of 
capital  were  used  unproductively,  and  the  people  were 
gradually  accustomed  to  believe  that  the  State  was 
responsible  for  their  enjoyment  as  well  as  their  food. 
But  we  must  be  most  careful  not  to  jump  to  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  this  was  due  to  any  deliberate  policy  on 
the  part  of  the  Roman  government.  They  drifted  into 
these  dangerous  shoals  in  spite  of  the  occasional  efforts 
of  intelligent  steersmen ;  and  it  would  indeed  have 
needed  a  higher  political  intelligence  than  was  then 
and  there  available,  to  have  fully  divined  the 
direction  of  the  drift  and  the  dangers  ahead  of  them. 

We  must  now  turn  in  the  last  place  to  consider 
the  nature  of  the  entertainments,  and  see  whether 
there  was  any  improving  or  educational  influence 
in  them. 

These  had  originally  consisted  entirely  of  shows 
of  a  military  character,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  case 
of  the  Ludi  Romani,  and  especially  of  chariot-racing 
in  the  old  Circus  Maximus.  The  Romans  seem 


3°° 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


always  to  have  been  fond  of  horses  and  racing,  though 
they  never  developed  a  large  or  thoroughly  efficient 
cavalry  force.  It  is  probable  that  the  position  of 
the  Circus  Maximus  in  the  vallis  Murcia 1  was  due  to 
horse-racing  near  the  underground  altar  of  Consus, 
a  harvest  deity,  and  the  oldest  religious  calendar 
has  Equirria  (horse-races)  on  February  27  and  March 
14,  no  doubt  in  connexion  with  the  preparation  of 
the  cavalry  for  the  coming  season  of  war.  And  in 
the  very  curious  ancient  rite  known  as  “  the  October 
horse,”  there  was  a  two -horse  chariot -race  in  the 
Campus  Martius,  when  the  season  of  arms  was  over, 
and  the  near  horse  of  the  winning  pair  was  sacrificed 
to  Mars.2  The  Ludi  Romani  consisted  chiefly  of 
chariot-races  until  364  B.c.  (when  plays  were  first 
introduced),  together  with  other  military  evolutions 
or  exercises,  such  perhaps  as  the  ludus  Troiae  of  the 
Roman  boys,  described  by  Virgil  in  the  fifth  Aeneid. 
Of  the  Ludi  Plebeii  we  do  not  know  the  original  char- 
acter,  but  it  is  likely  that  these  also  began  with 
circenses,  the  regular  word  for  chariot-races.  The  Ludi 
Cereales  certainly  included  circenses,  and  plays  are 
only  mentioned  as  forming  part  of  their  programme 
under  the  Empire;  but  on  the  last  day,  April  19, 
there  was  a  curious  practice  of  letting  foxes  loose 
in  the  Circus  Maximus  with  burning  firebrands  tied 
to  their  tails,3 — a  custom  undoubtedly  ancient,  which 
may  have  suggested  the  venationes  (hunts)  of  later 

1  See  above,  p.  13  ;  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  208. 

'l  Roman  Festivals,  p.  211.  3  lb.  p.  77  foil. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  301 

times,  for  one  of  which  Caelius  wanted  his  panthers. 
Of  the  other  three  ludi,  Apollinares,  Megalenses,  and 
Florales,  we  only  know  that  they  included  both 
circenses  and  plays ;  we  must  take  it  as  probable 
that  the  former  were  in  their  programme  from  the  first. 

There  is  no  need  to  describe  here  in  detail  the 
manner  of  the  chariot -racing.  We  can  picture  to 
ourselves  the  Circus  Maximus  filled  with  a  dense 
crowd  of  some  150,000  people,1  the  senators  in 
reserved  places,  and  the  consul  or  other  magistrate 
presiding ;  the  chariots,  usually  four  in  number, 
painted  at  this  time  either  red  or  white,  with  their 
drivers  in  the  same  colours,  issuing  from  the  carceres 
at  the  end  of  the  circus  next  to  the  Forum  Boarium 
and  the  river,  and  at  the  signal  racing  round  a  course 
of  about  1600  yards,  divided  into  two  halves  by  a 
spina ;  at  the  farther  end  of  this  the  chariots  had 
to  turn  sharply  and  always  with  a  certain  amount  of 
danger,  which  gave  the  race  its  chief  interest.  Seven 
complete  laps  of  this  course  constituted  a  missus  or 
race,2  and  the  number  of  races  in  a  day  varied  from 
time  to  time,  according  to  the  season  of  the  year  and 
the  equipment  of  the  particular  ludi.  The  rivalry 
between  factions  and  colours,  which  became  so  famous 
later  on  and  lasted  throughout  the  period  of  the 
Empire,  was  only  just,  beginning  in  Cicero’s  time. 
We  hear  hardly  anything  of  such  excitement  in  the 
literature  of  the  period ;  we  only  know  that  there 


1  Dionys.  Hal.  iii.  6S  gives  this  number  for  Augustus'  time,  and  so  far  as 
we  know  Augustus  had  not  enlarged  the  Circus.  2  Gell.  iii.  10.  16. 


302 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


were  already  two  rival  colours,  white  and  red,  and 
Pliny  tells  us  the  strange  story  that  one  chariot- 
owner,  a  Caecina  of  Volaterrae,  used  to  bring  swallows 
into  the  city  smeared  with  his  colour,  which  he  let 
loose  to  fly  home  and  so  bear  the  news  of  a  victory.1 
Human  nature  in  big  cities  seems  to  demand  some 
such  artificial  stimulus  to  excitement,  and  without  it 
the  racing  must  have  been  monotonous  ;  but  of  betting 
and  gambling  we  as  yet  hear  nothing  at  all.  Gradually, 
as  vast  sums  of  money  were  laid  out  by  capitalists 
and  even  by  senators  upon  the  horses  and  drivers, 
the  colour-factions  increased  in  numbers,  and  their 
rivalry  came  to  occupy  men’s  minds  as  completely  as 
do  now  the  chances  of  football  teams  in  our  own 
manufacturing  towns.2 

Exhibitions  of  gladiators  (munera)  did  not  as  yet 
take  place  at  ludi  or  on  public  festivals,  but  they 
may  be  mentioned  here,  because  they  were  already 
becoming  the  favourite  amusement  of  the  common 
people ;  Cicero  in  the  pro  Sestio 3  speaks  of  them  as 
“  that  kind  of  spectacle  to  which  all  sorts  of  people 
crowd  in  the  greatest  numbers,  and  in  which  the 
multitude  takes  the  greatest  delight.”  The  con- 
sequence  was,  of  course,  that  candidates  for  election 
to  magistracies  took  every  opportunity  of  giving 

1  Pliny,  N.H.  x.  71  :  he  seems  to  be  referring  to  an  earlier  time,  and  this 
Caecina  may  have  been  the  friend  of  Cicero.  In  another  passage  of  Pliny 
we  hear  of  the  red  faction  about  the  time  of  Sulla  (vii.  186  ;  Priedl.  p.  517). 
Cp.  Tertullian,  de  Spectaculis,  9. 

2  For  a  graphic  picture  of  the  scene  in  the  Circus  in  Augustus’  time  see 

Ovid,  Ars  Amatoria,  i.  135  foil.  3  ch.  59. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  303 

them ;  and  Cicero  himself  in  his  consulship  inserted 
a  clause  in  his  lex  de  arnbitu  forbidding  candidates 
to  give  such  exhibitions  within  two  years  of  the 
election.1  They  were  given  exclusively  by  private 
individuals  up  to  105  B.C.,  either  in  the  Forum  or  in 
one  or  other  circus  :  in  that  year  there  was  an  exhibi¬ 
tion  by  the  consuls,  but  there  is  some  evidence  that 
it  was  intended  to  instruct  the  soldiers  in  the  better 
use  of  their  weapons.  This  was  a  year  in  which  the 
State  was  in  sore  need  of  efficient  soldiers ;  Marius 
was  at  the  same  time  introducing  a  new  system  of 
recruiting  and  of  arming  the  soldier,  and  we  are  told 
that  the  consul  Rutilius  made  use  of  the  best  gladi¬ 
ators  that  were  to  be  found  in  the  training-school 
(ludus)  of  a  certain  Scaurus,  to  teach  the  men  a 
more  skilful  use  of  their  weapons.2  If  gladiators 
could  have  been  used  only  for  a  rational  purpose  like 
this,  as  skilful  swordsmen  and  military  instructors, 
the  State  might  well  have  maintained  some  force 
of  them.  But  as  it  was  they  remained  in  private 
hands,  and  no  limit  could  be  put  on  the  numbers  so 
maintained.  They  became  a  permanent  menace  to 
the  peace  of  society,  as  has  already  been  mentioned 
in  the  chapter  on  slavery.  Their  frequent  use  in 
funeral  games  is  a  somewhat  loathsome  feature  of 
the  age.  These  funeral  games  were  an  old  religious 
institution,  occurring  on  the  ninth  day  after  the  burial, 

1  See  Schol.  Bob.  on  the  pro  Sestio,  new  Teubner  ed.,  p.  105. 

2  Val.  Max.  ii.  3.  2.  The  conjecture  as  to  the  object  of  the  exhibition  by 
the  consuls  is  that  of  Biicheler,  in  Rhein.  Mus.  1883,  p.  476  foil. 


304 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


and  known  as  Ludi  Novemdiales ;  they  are  familiar 
to  every  one  from  Virgil’s  skilful  introduction  of  them, 
as  a  Roman  equivalent  for  the  Homeric  games,  in  the 
fifth  Aeneid,  on  the  anniversary  of  the  funeral  of 
Anchises.  Virgil  has  naturally  omitted  the  gladiators; 
but  long  before  his  time  it  had  become  common  to 
use  the  opportunity  of  the  funeral  of  a  relation  to 
give  munera  for  the  purpose  of  gaining  popularity.1 
A  good  example  is  that  of  young  Curio,  who  in 
53  b.c.  ruined  himself  in  this  way.  Cicero  alludes  to 
this  in  an  interesting  letter  to  Curio.2  “You  may 
reach  the  highest  honours,”  he  says,  “  more  easily 
by  your  natural  advantages  of  character,  diligence, 
and  fortune,  than  by  gladiatorial  exhibitions.  The 
power  of  giving  them  stirs  no  feeling  of  admiration 
in  any  one  :  it  is  a  question  of  means  and  not  of 
character  :  and  there  is  no  one  who  is  not  by  this 
time  sick  and  tired  of  them.”  To  Cicero’s  refined 
mind  they  were  naturally  repugnant ;  but  young 
men  like  Curio,  though  they  loved  Cicero,  were  not 
wont  to  follow  his  wholesome  advice.3 

AVe  turn  now  to  the  dramatic  element  in  the  ludi, 
chiefly  with  the  object  of  determining  whether,  in 
the  age  of  Cicero,  it  was  of  any  real  importance  in 
the  social  life  of  the  Roman  people.  The  Roman 

1  The  example  was  set,  according  to  Livy,  Epit.  16,  by  a  Junius  Brutus 
at  the  beginning  of  the  first  Punic  war.  2  ad  Farm.  ii.  3. 

3  The  origin  of  these  bloody  shows  at  funerals  needs  further  investigation. 
It  may  be  connected  with  a  primitive  and  savage  custom  of  sacrificing 
captives  to  the  Manes  of  a  chief,  of  which  we  have  a  reminiscence  in  the 
sacrifice  of  captives  by  Aeneas,  in  Virg.  Aen.  xi.  82. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  305 

stage  had  had  a  great  history  before  the  last  century 
b.c.,  into  which  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  enter.  It 
had  always  been  possible  without  difficulty  for  those 
who  were  responsible  for  the  ludi  to  put  on  the 
stage  a  tragedy  or  comedy  either  written  for  the 
occasion  or  reproduced,  with  competent  actors  and 
the  necessary  music ;  and  there  seems  to  be  no 
doubt  that  both  tragedies  and  comedies,  whether 
adapted  from  the  Greek  (fabulae  palliatae)  or  of  a 
national  character  (fab.  togatae),  were  enjoyed  by 
the  audiences.  In  the  days  of  the  Punic  wars  and 
afterwards,  when  everything  Greek  was  popular,  a 
Roman  audience  could  appreciate  stories  of  the 
Greek  mythology,  as  presented  in  the  tragedies  of 
Ennius,  Pacuvius,  and  Accius,  if  without  learning  to 
read  in  them  the  great  problems  of  human  life,  at 
least  as  spectacles  of  the  vicissitudes  of  human 
fortune ;  and  had  occasionally  listened  to  a  tragedy, 
or  perhaps  rather  a  dramatic  history,  based  on  some 
familiar  legend  of  their  own  State.  And  the  condi¬ 
tions  of  social  life  in  Rome  and  Athens  were  not  so 
different  but  that  in  the  hands  of  a  real  genius  like 
Plautus  the  New  Athenian  comedy  could  come 
home  to  the  Roman  people,  with  their  delight  in 
rather  rough  fun  and  comical  situations :  and 
Plautus  was  followed  by  Caecilius  and  the  more 
refined  Terence,  before  the  national  comedy  of 
Afranius  and  others  established  itself  in  the  place 
of  the  Greek.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  avoid  the 
conclusion  that  in  those  early  days  of  the  Roman 

x 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAT. 


306 

theatre  the  audiences  were  really  intelligent,  and 
capable  of  learning  something  from  the  pieces  they 
listened  to,  apart  from  their  natural  love  of  a  show, 
of  all  acting,  and  of  music.1 

But  before  the  age  with  which  this  book  deals, 
the  long  succession  of  great  dramatic  writers  had 
come  to  an  end.  Accius,  the  nephew  of  Pacuvius, 
had  died  as  a  very  old  man  when  Cicero  was  a  boy ; 2 
and  in  the  national  comedy  no  one  had  been  found 
to  follow  Afranius.  The  times  were  disturbed,  the 
population  was  restless,  and  continually  incorporating 
heterogeneous  elements  :  much  amusement  could  be 
found  in  the  life  of  the  Forum,  and  in  rioting  and 
disorder ;  gladiatorial  shows  were  organised  on  a 
large  scale.  To  sit  still  and  watch  a  good  play 
would  become  more  tiresome  as  the  plebs  grew  more 
restless,  and  probably  even  the  taste  of  the  better 
educated  was  degenerating  as  the  natural  result  of 
luxury  and  idleness.  Politics  and  political  personages 
were  the  really  exciting  features  of  the  time,  and 
there  are  signs  that  audiences  took  advantage  of 
the  plays  to  express  their  approval  or  dislike  of  a 
statesman.  In  a  letter  to  Atticus,  written  in  the 
summer  of  59, 3  the  first  year  of  the  triumvirate, 
Cicero  describes  with  enthusiasm  how  at  the  Ludi 
Apollinares  the  actor  Diphilus  made  an  allusion  to 
Pompey  in  the  words  (from  an  unknown  tragedy 

1  See  Lucian  Muller’s  Ennius,  p.  35  foil.,  where  he  maintains  against 
Mommsen  the  intelligence  and  taste  of  the  Romans  of  the  2nd  century  B.c. 

2  Cic.  Brutus,  28.  107,  where  he  speaks  of  having  known  the  poet  himself. 

3  ad  Att.  ii.  19. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  30 7 

then  being  acted),  “  Nostra  miseria  tu  es — Magnus," 
and  was  forced  to  repeat  them  many  times.  When 
he  delivered  the  line 

“  Eandem  virtutem  istam  veniet  tempus  cum  graviter  gemes,” 

the  whole  theatre  broke  out  into  frantic  applause. 
So  too  in  a  well-known  passage  of  the  speech  pro 
Sestio  he  tells  from  hearsay  how  the  great  tragic 
actor  Aesopus,  acting  in  the  Eurysaces  of  Accius, 
was  again  and  again  interrupted  by  applause  as  he 
cleverly  adapted  the  words  to  the  expected  recall 
from  exile  of  the  orator,  his  personal  friend.1  The 
famous  words  “  Summum  amicum,  summo  in  bello, 
summo  ingenio  praeditum,”  were  among  those  which 
the  modest  Cicero  tells  us  were  taken  up  by  the 
people  with  enthusiasm, — greatly,  without  doubt,  to 
the  detriment  of  the  play.  The  whole  passage  is 
one  of  great  graphic  power,  and  only  fails  to  rouse 
us  too  to  enthusiasm  when  we  reflect  that  Cicero 
was  not  himself  present. 

From  this  and  other  passages  we  have  abundant 
evidence  that  tragedies  were  still  acted ;  but  Cicero 
nowhere  in  his  correspondence,  where  we  might 
naturally  have  expected  to  find  it,  nor  in  his  philo¬ 
sophical  works,  gives  us  any  idea  of  their  educational 
or  aesthetic  influence  either  on  himself  or  others. 
He  is  constantly  quoting  the  old  plays,  especially 
the  tragedies,  and  knows  them  very  well :  but  he 
quotes  them  almost  invariably  as  literature  only. 


1  Pro  Sestio,  55.  117  foil. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


308 

Once  or  twice,  as  we  shall  see,  he  recalls  the  gesture 
or  utterance  of  a  great  actor,  but  as  a  rule  he  is 
thinking  of  them  as  poetry  rather  than  as  plays.  It 
may  be  noted  in  this  connexion  that  it  was  now 
becoming  the  fashion  to  write  plays  without  any 
immediate  intention  of  bringing  them  on  the  stage. 
We  read  with  astonishment  in  a  letter  of  Cicero  to 
his  brother  Quintus,  then  in  Gaul,  that  the  latter 
had  taken  to  play -writing,  and  accomplished  four 
tragedies  in  sixteen  days,  and  this  apparently  in 
the  course  of  the  campaign.1  One,  the  Erigona ,  was 
sent  to  his  brother  from  Britain,  and  lost  on  the 
way.  We  hear  no  more  of  these  plays,  and  have  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  they  were  worthy  to  survive. 
No  man  of  literary  eminence  in  that  day  wrote 
plays  for  acting,  and  in  fact  the  only  person  of  note, 
so  far  as  we  know,  who  did  so,  was  the  younger 
Cornelius  Balbus,  son  of  the  intimate  friend  and 
secretary  of  Caesar.  This  man  wrote  one  in  Latin 
about  his  journey  to  his  native  town  of  Gades,  had 
it  put  on  the  stage  there,  and  shed  tears  during  its 
performance.2 

When  we  hear  of  plays  being  written  without 
being  acted,  and  of  tragedies  being  made  the  occasion 
of  expressing  political  opinions,  we  may  be  pretty 
sure  that  the  drama  is  in  its  nonage.  An  interest¬ 
ing  proof  of  the  same  tendency  is  to  be  found  in  the 

1  ad  Q.  Fratr.  iii.  5. 

2  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  this  information  comes  from  a  letter  of  Asinius 
Pollio  to  Cicero  (ad  Fam.  x.  32.  3),  and  as  Pollio  was  one  who  had  a  word  of 
mockery  for  every  one,  we  may  discount  the  story  of  the  tears. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  309 

first  book  of  the  Ars  Amatoria  of  Ovid,  though 
it  belongs  to  the  age  of  Augustus.  In  this  book 
Ovid  describes  the  various  resorts  in  the  city  where 
the  youth  may  look  out  for  his  girl ;  and  when  he 
comes  to  the  theatre,  draws  a  pretty  picture  of  the 
ladies  of  taste  and  fashion  crowding  thither, — but 

Spectatum  veniunt :  veniunt  spectentur  ut  ipsae. 

And  then,  without  a  word  about  the  play,  or  the 
smallest  hint  that  he  or  the  ladies  really  cared  about 
such  things,  he  goes  off  into  the  familiar  story  of  the 
rape  of  the  Sabine  women,  supposed  to  have  taken 
place  when  Romulus  was  holding  his  ludi. 

It  is  curious,  in  view  of  what  thus  seems  to  be  a 
flagging  interest  in  the  drama  as  such,  to  find  that 
the  most  remarkable  event  in  the  theatrical  history 
of  this  time  is  the  building  of  the  first  permanent 
stone  theatre.  During  the  whole  long  period  of  the 
popularity  of  the  drama  the  government  had  never 
consented  to  the  erection  of  a  permanent  theatre 
after  the  Greek  fashion  ;  though  it  was  impossible 
to  prohibit  the  production  of  plays  adapted  from 
the  Greek,  there  seems  to  have  been  some  strange 
scruple  felt  about  giving  Rome  this  outward  token 
of  a  Greek  city.  Temporary  stages  were  erected  in 
the  Forum  or  the  circus,  the  audience  at  first  standing, 
but  afterwards  accommodated  with  seats  in  a  cavea 
of  wood  erected  for  the  occasion.  The  whole  show, 
including  play,  actors,  and  pipe  -  players 1  to  accom- 

1  Tibicines,  usually  mistranslated  flute-players ;  this  characteristic  Italian 


3io 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


pany  the  voices  where  necessary,  was  contracted  for, 
like  all  such  undertakings,1  on  each  occasion  of  Ludi 
scaenici  being  produced.  At  last,  in  the  year  154 
B.c.,  the  censors  had  actually  set  about  the  building 
of  a  theatre,  apparently  of  stone,  when  the  reactionary 
Scipio  Nasica,  acting  under  the  influence  of  a  tem¬ 
porary  anti -Greek  movement,  persuaded  the  senate 
to  put  a  stop  to  this  symptom  of  degeneracy,  and 
to  pass  a  decree  that  no  seats  were  in  future  to  be 
provided,  “  ut  scilicet  remissioni  animorum  standi 
virilitas  propria  Romanae  gentis  iuncta  esset.” 2 
Whether  this  extraordinary  decree,  of  which  the 
legality  might  have  been  questioned  a  generation 
later,  had  any  permanent  effect,  we  do  not  know ; 
certainly  the  senators,  and  after  the  time  of  Gaius 
Gracchus  the  equites,  sat  on  seats  appropriated  to 
them.  But  Rome  continued  to  be  without  a  stone 
theatre  until  Pompey,  in  the  year  of  his  second 
consulship,  55  b.c.,  built  one  on  a  grand  scale, 
capable  of  holding  40,000  people.  Even  he,  we 
are  told,  could  not  accomplish  this  without  some 
criticism  from  the  old  and  old-fashioned, — so  lasting 
was  the  prejudice  against  anything  that  might  seem 
to  be  turning  Rome  into  a  Greek  city.3  There  was 
a  story  too,  of  which  it  is  difficult  to  make  out  the 
real  origin,  that  he  was  compelled  by  popular  feel- 

instrument  was  really  a  primitive  oboe  played  with  a  reed,  and  usually  of 
the  double  form  (two  pipes  with  a  connected  mouthpiece),  still  sometimes 
seen  in  Italy. 

1  See  above,  p.  70.  3  Val.  Max.  ii.  4.  2  ;  Livy,  Epit.  48. 

1  Tacitus,  Ann.  xiv.  20. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  311 

ing  to  conceal  his  design  by  building,  immediately 
behind  the  theatre,  a  temple  of  Venus  Victrix,  the 
steps  of  which  were  in  some  way  connected  with  his 
auditorium.1  The  theatre  was  placed  in  the  Campus 
Martius,  and  its  shape  is  fairly  well  known  to  us  from 
fragments  of  the  Capitoline  plan  of  the  city;2  adjoin¬ 
ing  it  Pompey  also  built  a  magnificent  portions  for 
the  convenience  of  the  audience,  and  a  curia ,  in  which 
the  senate  could  meet,  and  where,  eleven  years  later, 
the  great  Dictator  was  murdered  at  the  feet  of 
Pompey’s  statue. 

In  spite  of  the  magnificence  of  this  building,  it 
was  by  no  means  destined  to  revive  the  earlier 
prosperity  of  the  tragic  and  comic  drama.  Even 
at  the  opening  of  it  the  signs  of  degeneracy  are 
apparent.  Luckily  for  us  Cicero  was  in  Rome  at 
the  time,  and  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  the  country 
he  congratulates  him  on  being  too  unwell  to  come  to 
Rome  and  see  the  spoiling  of  old  tragedies  by  over¬ 
display.3  “The  ludi,”  he  says,  “had  not  even  that 
charm  which  games  on  a  moderate  scale  generally 
have ;  the  spectacle  was  so  elaborate  as  to  leave  no 
room  for  cheerful  enjoyment,  and  I  think  you  need 
feel  no  regret  at  having  missed  it.  What  is  the 
pleasure  of  a  train  of  six  hundred  mules  in  the 

1  Tertullian,  de  Spectaculis,  10  ;  Pliny,  N.H.  viii.  20. 

2  See  the  excellent  account  in  Hiilsen,  vol.  iii.  of  Jordan’s  Topograph.it 
p.  524  foil.  Some  of  the  arches  of  the  supporting  arcade  are  still  visible. 

*  ad  Fam.  vii.  1.  Professor  Tyrrell  calls  this  letter  a  rhetorical  exercise  ; 
is  it  not  rather  one  of  those  in  which  Cicero  is  taking  pains  to  write,  there¬ 
fore  writing  less  easily  and  naturally  than  usual  ? 


312 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Clytemnestra  (of  Accius),  or  three  thousand  bowls 
(craterae)  in  the  Trojan  Horse  (of  Livius),  or  gay- 
coloured  armour  of  infantry  and  cavalry  in  some  mimic 
battle  ?  These  things  roused  the  admiration  of  the 
vulgar  :  to  you  they  would  have  brought  no  delight.” 
This  ostentatious  stage-display  finds  its  counterpart 
to  some  extent  at  the  present  day,  and  may  remind  us 
also  of  the  huge  orchestras  of  blaring  sound  which  are 
the  delight  of  the  modern  composer  and  the  modern 
musical  audience.  And  the  plays  were  by  no  means 
the  only  part  of  the  show.  There  were  displays  of 
athletes ;  but  these  never  seem  to  have  greatly 
interested  a  Roman  audience,  and  Cicero  says  that 
Pompey  confessed  that  they  were  a  failure ;  but  to 
make  up  for  that  there  were  wild-beast  shows  for  five 
whole  days  ( venationes ) — “magnificent,”  the  letter 
goes  on,  “  no  one  denies  it,  yet  what  pleasure  can  it 
be  to  a  man  of  refinement,  when  a  weak  man  is  torn 
by  a  very  powerful  animal,  or  a  splendid  animal  is 
transfixed  by  a  hunting-spear  ?  .  .  .  The  last  day 
was  that  of  the  elephants,  about  which  there  was  a 
good  deal  of  astonishment  on  the  part  of  the  vulgar 
crowd,  but  no  pleasure  whatever.  Nay,  there  was 
even  a  feeling  of  compassion  aroused  by  them,  and  a 
notion  that  this  animal  has  something  in  common 
with  mankind.”  1  This  last  interesting  sentence  is 
confirmed  by  a  passage  in  Pliny’s  Natural  History , 
in  which  he  asserts  that  the  people  were  so  much 

1  I  have  used  Mr.  Shuckburgh’s  translation,  with  one  or  two  verbal 
changes. 


x  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  313 

moved  that  they  actually  execrated  Pompey.1  The 
last  age  of  the  Republic  is  a  transitional  one,  in  this, 
as  in  other  ways ;  the  people  are  not  yet  thoroughly 
inured  to  bloodshed  and  cruelty  to  animals,  as  they 
afterwards  became  when  deprived  of  political  excite¬ 
ments,  and  left  with  nothing  violent  to  amuse  them 
but  the  displays  of  the  amphitheatre. 

Earlier  in  this  same  letter  Cicero  had  told  his 
friend  Marius  that  on  this  occasion  certain  old  actors 
had  re-appeared  on  the  stage,  who,  as  he  thought,  had 
left  it  for  good.  The  only  one  he  mentions  is  the 
great  tragic  actor  Aesopus,  who  “  was  in  such  a  state 
that  no  one  could  say  a  word  against  his  retiring 
from  the  profession.”  At  one  important  point  his 
voice  failed  him.  This  may  conveniently  remind  us 
that  Aesopus  was  the  last  of  the  great  actors  of 
tragedy,  and  that  his  best  days  were  in  the  early 
half  of  this  century — another  sign  of  the  decay  of 
the  legitimate  drama.  He  was  an  intimate  friend  of 
Cicero,  and  from  a  few  references  to  him  in  the 
Ciceronian  writings  we  can  form  some  idea  of  his 
genius.  In  one  passage  Cicero  writes  of  having  seen 
him  looking  so  wild  and  gesticulating  so  excitedly, 
that  he  seemed  almost  to  have  lost  command  of  him¬ 
self.2  In  the  description,  already  quoted  from  the 
speech  pro  Sestio,  of  the  scene  in  the  theatre  before 
his  recall  from  exile,  he  speaks  of  this  “summus 
artifex  ”  as  delivering  his  allusions  to  the  exile  with 

1  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.  viii.  21. 

5  de  Div.  i.  37.  80.  Cp.  the  story  in  Plut.  Cic.  5. 


31 4 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


infinite  force  and  passion.  Yet  the  later  tradition  of 
his  acting  was  rather  that  he  was  serious  and  self- 
restrained  ;  Horace  calls  him  gravis,  and  Quintilian 
too  speaks  of  his  gravitas.1  Probably,  like  Garrick, 
he  was  capable  of  a  great  variety  of  moods  and 
parts.  How  carefully  he  studied  the  varieties  of 
gesticulation  is  indicated  by  a  curious  story  pre¬ 
served  by  Valerius  Maximus,  that  he  and  Roscius  the 
great  comedian  used  to  go  and  sit  in  the  courts  in 
order  to  observe  the  action  of  the  orator  Hortensius.2 

Roscius  too  was  an  early  intimate  friend  of  Cicero, 
who,  like  Caesar,  seems  to  have  valued  the  friendship 
of  all  men  of  genius,  without  regard  to  their  origin 
or  profession.  Roscius  seems  to  have  been  a  freed- 
man  ; 3  his  great  days  were  in  Cicero’s  early  life,  and 
he  died  in  61  B.C.,  to  the  deep  grief  of  all  his  friends.'* 
So  wonderfully  finished  was  his  acting  that  it  became 
a  common  practice  to  call  any  one  a  Roscius  whose 
work  was  more  than  usually  perfect.  He  never  could 
find  a  pupil  of  whom  he  could  entirely  approve ; 
many  had  good  points,  but  if  there  were  a  single  blot, 
the  master  could  not  bear  it.5  In  the  de  Oratore 
Cicero  tells  us  several  interesting  things  about  him, — 
how  he  laid  the  proper  emphasis  on  the  right  words, 
reserving  his  gesticulation  until  he  came  to  them ; 
and  how  he  was  never  so  much  admired  when  acting 

1  Hor.  Ep.  ii.  82;  Quintil.  ii.  3.  111. 

2  Val.  Max.  viii.  10.  2.  Cicero  was  said  to  have  learnt  gesticulation  both 
from  Aesopus  and  Roscius. — Plut.  Cic.  5. 

5  Pliny,  N.E.  vii.  128. 

6  Dt  Oratore,  i.  28.  129. 


*  Fro  Archia,  8. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  315 

with  a  mask  on,  because  the  expression  of  his  face 
was  so  full  of  meaning.1 

In  Cicero’s  later  years,  when  Eoscius  was  dead  and 
Aesopus  retired,  we  hear  no  more  of  great  actors  of 
this  type.  With  these  two  remarkable  men  the  great 
days  of  the  Eoman  drama  come  to  an  end,  and 
henceforward  the  favourite  plays  are  merely  farces, 
of  which  a  word  must  here  be  said  in  the  last  place. 

The  origin  of  these  farces,  as  indeed  of  all  kinds  of 
Latin  comedy,  and  probably  also  of  the  literary  satura, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  jokes  and  rude  fun  of  the  country 
festivals,  and  especially  perhaps,  as  Horace  tells  us 
of  the  harvest  amusements  : 2 

Fescennina  per  hunc  inventa  licentia  morem 
Versibus  altemis  opprobria  rustica  fudit, 

Libertasque  recurrentis  accepta  per  anno3 
Lusit  amabiiiter,  etc. 

Epist.  ii.  1.  145  folL 

These  amusements  were  always  accompanied  with 
the  music  and  dancing  so  dear  to  the  Italian  peoples, 
and  it  is  easy  to  divine  how  they  may  have  gradually 
developed  into  plays  of  a  rude  but  tolerably  fixed 
type,  with  improvised  dialogue,  acted  in  the  streets, 
or  later  in  the  intervals  between  acts  at  the  theatre, 
and  eventually  as  afterpieces,  more  after  our  own 
fashion. 

In  Cicero’s  day  two  kinds  of  farces  were  in  vogue. 
In  his  earlier  fife  the  so-called  Atellan  plays  (fabulae 

1  De  Oratore,  iii.  27,  59. 

2  A  useful  succinct  account  of  tbe  literature  of  this  difficult  subject  will 
be  found  in  Schanz,  Gesch.  der  rim.  Litteratur,  vol.  i.  (ed.  3)  p.  21  foil. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


3j6 

Atellanae)  were  the  favourites :  these  were  of  indi¬ 
genous  Latin  origin,  and  probably  took  their  name 
from  the  ruined  town  Atella,  which  might  provide  a 
permanent  scenery  as  the  background  of  the  plays 
without  offending  the  jealousy  of  any  of  the  other 
Latin  cities.1  They  were  doubtless  very  comic,  but 
it  was  possible  to  get  tired  of  them,  for  the  number 
of  stock  characters  was  limited,  and  the  masks  were 
always  the  same  for  each  character — the  old  man 
Pappus,  the  glutton  Bucco,  Dossennus  the  sharper,  etc. 
About  the  time  of  Sulla  the  mimes  seem  to  have  dis¬ 
placed  these  old  farces  in  popular  favour,  perhaps 
because  their  fun  was  more  varied  ;  the  mere  fact  that 
the  actors  did  not  wear  masks  shows  that  the  impro¬ 
visation  could  be  freer  and  less  stereotyped.  But  both 
kinds  were  alike  coarse,  and  may  be  called  the  comedy 
of  low  life  in  country  towns  and  in  the  great  city. 
Sulla’s  tastes  seem  to  have  been  low  in  the  matter 
of  plays,  if  we  may  trust  Plutarch,  who  asserts  that 
when  he  was  young  he  spent  much  of  his  time  among 
mimi  and  jesters,  and  that  when  he  was  dictator 
he  “  daily  got  together  from  the  theatre  the  lewdest 
persons,  with  whom  he  would  drink  and  enter  into 
a  contest  of  coarse  witticisms.”  2  This  may  be  due 
to  the  evidence  of  an  enemy,  but  it  is  not  improbable; 
and  it  is  possible  that  both  Sulla  and  Caesar,  who 
also  patronised  the  mimes,  may  have  wished  to  avoid 

1  This  is  the  view  of  Mommsen,  Hist.  iii.  p.  455,  which  is  generally 
accepted.  For  further  information  see  Teuffel,  Hist,  of  Roman  Literature, 
i.  (ed.  2)  p.  9.  That  they  were  in  fashion  before  the  mimus  is  gathered 
from  Cic.  ad  Fam.  ix.  16.  2  Plut.  Sulla,  2  :  cp.  36. 


X  HOLIDAYS  AND  AMUSEMENTS  317 

the  personal  allusions  which,  as  we  have  seen,  were  so 
often  made  or  imagined  in  the  exhibition  of  tragedies, 
and  have  aimed  at  confining  the  plays  to  such  as 
would  give  less  opportunity  for  unwelcome  criticism.1 

About  the  year  50  b.c.,  as  we  have  seen  in  the 
chapter  on  education,  there  came  to  Italy  the  Syrian 
Publilius,  who  began  to  write  mimes  in  verse,  thus 
for  the  first  time  giving  them  a  literary  turn.  Caesar, 
always  on  the  look-out  for  talent,  summoned  him  to 
Rome,  and  awarded  him  the  palm  for  his  plays.2 
These  must  have  been,  as  regards  wit  and  style,  of 
a  much  higher  order  than  any  previous  mimes,  and 
in  fact  not  far  removed  from  the  older  Roman  comedy 
(fabula  togata)  in  manner.  Cicero  alludes  to  them 
twice :  and  writing  to  Cornificius  from  Rome  in 
October  45  he  says  that  at  Caesar’s  ludi  he  listened 
to  the  poems  of  Publilius  and  Laberius  with  a  well- 
pleased  mind.3  “  Nihil  mihi  tamen  deesse  scito  quam 
quicum  haec  familiariter  docteque  rideam  ”  ;  here  the 
word  docte  seems  to  suggest  that  the  performance 
was  at  least  worthy  of  the  attention  of  a  cultivated 
man.  Laberius,  also  a  Roman  knight,  wrote  mimes 
at  the  same  time  as  Publilius,  and  was  beaten  by  him 
in  competition  ;  of  him  it  is  told  that  he  was  induced 

1  Political  allusions  in  mimes,  were,  however,  not  unknown.  Cp.  Cic. 
ad  Att.  xiv.  3,  written  in  44  b.c.,  after  Caesar’s  death. 

2  All  the  passages  about  Publilius  are  collected  in  Mr.  Bickford  Smith’s 
edition  of  his  Sententiae,  p.  10  foil.  On  mimes  generally  the  reader  may  be 
referred  to  Professor  Purser’s  excellent  article  in  Smith’s  Diet,  of  Antiq. 
ed.  2. 

3  Animo  aequissimo,  ad  Fam.  xii.  19.  He  means  perhaps  rather  that 
flattering  allusions  to  Caesar  did  not  hurt  his  feelings. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP.  X 


318 

by  Caesar  to  act  in  his  own  mime,  and  revenged 
himself  for  the  insult,  as  it  was  then  felt  to  be  by  a 
Roman  of  good  birth,  in  a  prologue  which  has  come 
down  to  us.1  We  may  suppose  that  his  plays  were 
of  the  same  type  as  those  of  Publilius,  and  inter¬ 
spersed  with  those  wise  sayings,  sententiae,  which 
the  Roman  people  were  still  capable  of  appreciating. 
Even  in  the  time  of  Seneca  applause  was  given  to 
any  words  which  the  audience  felt  at  once  to  be  true 
and  to  hit  the  mark.2 

Thus  the  mime  was  lifted  from  the  level  of  the 
lowest  farcical  improvisation  to  a  recognised  position 
in  literature,  and  quite  incidentally  became  useful  in 
education.  But  the  coarseness  remained  ;  the  dancing 
was  grotesque  and  the  fun  ribald,  and,  as  Professor 
Purser  says,  the  plots  nearly  always  involved  “  some 
incident  of  an  amorous  nature  in  which  ordinary 
morality  was  set  at  defiance.”  The  Roman  audience 
of  the  early  Empire  enjoyed  these  things,  and  all 
sorts  of  dancing,  singing,  and  instrumental  music, 
and  above  all  the  pantomimus,3  in  which  the  actor 
only  gesticulated,  without  speaking ;  this  and  the 
fact  that  the  real  drama  never  again  had  a  fair 
chance  is  one  of  the  many  signs  that  the  city  popula¬ 
tion  was  losing  both  virility  and  intelligence. 

1  See  Ribbeck,  Fragm.  Comic.  Lat.  p.  295  foil. 

2  Seneca,  Epist.  108.  8. 

*  See  another  excellent  article  of  Professor  Purser’s  in  the  Did.  of  Antiq. 


CHAPTEE  XI 

RELIGION 

It  is  easy  to  write  the  word  “  religion  ”  at  the  head 
of  this  chapter,  but  by  no  means  easy  to  find  any¬ 
thing  in  this  materialistic  period  which  answers  to  our 
use  of  the  word.  In  the  w'hole  mass,  for  example,  of 
the  Ciceronian  correspondence,  there  is  hardly  any¬ 
thing  to  show  that  Cicero  and  his  friends,  and  therefore, 
as  we  may  presume,  the  average  educated  man  of  the 
day,  were  affected  in  their  thinking  or  their  conduct 
by  any  sense  of  dependence  on,  or  responsibility  to, 
a  Supreme  Being.  If,  however,  it  had  been  possible 
to  substitute  for  the  English  word  the  Latin  religio, 
it  would  have  made  a  far  more  appropriate  title 
to  this  chapter,  for  religio  meant  primarily  awe, 
nervousness,  scruple-much  the  same  in  fact  as  that 
feeling  which  in  these  days  we  call  superstition  ;  and 
secondarily  the  means  taken,  under  the  authority  of 
the  State,  to  quiet  such  feelings  by  the  performance 
of  rites  meant  to  propitiate  the  gods.1  In  both  of 
these  senses  religio  is  to  be  found  in  the  last  age  of 

1  See  the  Hiblert  Journal  for  July  1907,  p.  847.  In  the  second  sense 
Cicero  often  uses  the  plural  “religiones,”  esp.  in  de  Legions,  ii. 

319 


320 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAF. 


the  Republic  ;  but,  as  we  shall  see,  the  tendency  to 
superstitious  nervousness  was  very  imperfectly  allayed, 
and  the  worship  that  should  have  allayed  it  was  in 
great  measure  neglected. 

It  may  be,  indeed,  that  in  quiet  country  districts 
the  joyous  rural  festivals  went  on — we  have  many 
allusions  and  a  few  descriptions  of  them  in  the 
literature  of  the  Augustan  period, — and  also  the 
worship  of  the  household  deities,  in  which  there 
perhaps  survived  a  feeling  of  pietas  more  nearly 
akin  to  what  we  call  religious  feeling  than  in  any 
of  the  cults  ( sacra  publico)  undertaken  by  the  State 
for  the  people.  Even  in  the  city  the  cult  of  the 
dead,  or  what  may  perhaps  be  better  called  the 
religious  attention  paid  to  their  resting-places,  and 
the  religious  ceremonies  attending  birth,  puberty, 
and  marriage,  were  kept  up  as  matters  of  form  and 
custom  among  the  upper  and  wealthier  classes.  But 
the  great  mass  of  the  population  of  Rome,  we  may 
be  almost  sure,  knew  nothing  of  these  rites  ;  the  poor 
man,  for  example,  could  no  more  afford  a  tomb  for 
himself  than  a  house,  and  his  body  was  thrown  into 
some  puticulus  or  common  burying-place,1  where  it 
was  impossible  that  any  yearly  ceremonies  could  be 
performed  to  his  memory,  even  if  any  one  cared  to 
do  so.  And  among  the  higher  strata  of  society,  out¬ 
side  of  these  sacra  privata,  carelessness  and  negligence 
of  the  old  State  cults  were  steadily  on  the  increase. 

1  See  Middleton,  Rome  in  1887,  p.  423  ;  Horace,  Sat.  i.  8.  8  foil.  ;  Nissen, 
Italische  Landeskunde,  ii.  p.  522. 


XI 


RELIGION 


321 


Neither  Cicero  nor  any  of  his  contemporaries  but 
Yarro  has  anything  to  tell  us  of  their  details,  and  the 
decay  had  gone  so  far  that  Yarro  himself  knew  little 
or  nothing  about  many  of  the  deities  of  the  old 
religious  calendar,1  or  of  the  ways  in  which  they  had 
at  one  time  been  worshipped.  Yesta,  with  her  simple 
cult  and  her  virgin  priestesses,  was  almost  the  only 
deity  who  was  not  either  forgotten  or  metamorphosed 
in  one  way  or  another  under  the  influence  of  Greek 
literature  and  mythology ;  Vesta  was  too  well  recog¬ 
nised  as  a  symbol  of  the  State’s  vitality  to  be  subject 
to  neglect  like  other  and  less  significant  cults.  The  old 
sacrificing  priesthoods,  such  as  the  Fratres  Ar vales 
and  the  lesser  Flamines,  seem  not  to  have  been  filled 
up  by  the  pontifices  whose  duty  it  was  to  do  so  : 
and  the  Flamen  Dialis,  the  priest  of  Jupiter  himself, 
is  not  heard  of  from  89  to  11  B.c.,  when  he  appears 
again  as  a  part  of  the  Augustan  religious  restoration. 
The  explanation  is  probably  that  these  offices  could 
not  be  held  together  with  any  secular  one  which 
might  take  the  holder  away  from  Rome  ;  and  as  every 
man  of  good  family  had  business  in  the  provinces,  no 
qualified  person  could  be  found  willing  to  put  himself 
under  the  restriction.  The  temples  too  seem  to  have 
been  sadly  neglected ;  Augustus  tells  us  himself 2 
that  he  had  to  restore  no  less  than  eighty-two ;  and 
from  Cicero  we  actually  hear  of  thefts  of  statues  and 
other  temple  property3 — sacrileges  which  may  be 

1  Fowler,  Roman  Festivals,  p.  336  foil. 

*  Monumentum  Ancyranum  (Lat. ),  4.  17.  3  de  Nat.  Deor.  i.  29.  82. 

Y 


322 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


attributed  to  the  general  demoralisation  caused  by 
the  Social  and  Civil  Wars.  At  the  same  time  there 
seems  to  have  been  a  strong  tendency  to  go  after 
strange  gods,  with  whose  worship  Roman  soldiers 
had  made  acquaintance  in  the  course  of  their  numer¬ 
ous  eastern  campaigns.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that 
no  less  than  four  times  in  a  single  decade  the  wor¬ 
ship  of  Isis  had  to  be  suppressed, — in  58,  53,  50,  and 
48  B.C.  In  the  year  50  we  are  told  that  the  consul 
Aemilius  Paullus,  a  conservative  of  the  old  type, 
actually  threw  off  his  toga  praetexta  and  took  an 
axe  to  begin  destroying  the  temple,  because  no 
workmen  could  be  found  to  venture  on  the  work.1 
These  are  indeed  strange  times  ;  the  beautiful  religion 
of  Isis,  wdiich  assuredly  had  some  power  to  purify  a 
man  and  strengthen  his  conscience,2  was  to  be  driven 
out  of  a  city  where  the  old  local  religion  had  never 
had  any  such  power,  and  where  the  masses  were  now 
left  without  a  particle  of  aid  or  comfort  from  any 
religious  source.  The  story  seems  to  ring  true,  and 
gives  us  a  most  valuable  glimpse  into  the  mental 
condition  of  the  Roman  workman  of  the  time. 

Of  such  foreign  worships,  and  of  the  general 
neglect  of  the  old  cults,  Cicero  tells  us  nothing ;  we 
have  to  learn  or  to  guess  at  these  facts  from  evidence 
supplied  by  later  writers.  His  interest  in  religious 
practice  was  confined  to  ceremonies  which  had  some 
political  importance.  He  was  himself  an  augur,  and 


1  Valerius  Maximus,  Epit.  3.  4  ;  Wissowa,  Eel.  und  Kult.  p.  293. 
2  See,  e.g.  Dill,  Eoman  Society  from,  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  ch.  t. 


xr 


RELIGION 


323 


was  mucli  pleased  with  his  election  to  that  ancient 
college ;  but,  like  most  other  augurs  of  the  time,  he 
knew  nothing  of  augural  “  science,”  and  only  cared 
to  speculate  philosophically  on  the  question  whether 
it  is  possible  to  foretell  the  future.  He  looked 
upon  the  right  of  the  magistrate  to  “  observe  the 
heaven  ”  as  a  part  of  an  excellent  constitution,1  and 
could  not  forgive  Caesar  for  refusing  in  59  B.C.  to  have 
his  legislation  paralysed  by  the  fanatical  declarations 
of  his  colleague  that  he  was  going  to  “  look  for 
lightning.”  He  firmly  believed  in  the  value  of  the 
ius  divinum  of  the  State.  In  his  treatise  on  the 
constitution  ( de  Legibus )  he  devotes  a  whole  book  to 
this  religious  side  of  constitutional  law,  and  gives  a 
sketch  of  it  in  quasi -legal  language  from  which  it 
appears  that  he  entirely  accepted  the  duty  of  the 
State  to  keep  the  citizen  in  right  relation  to  the  gods, 
on  whose  goodwill  his  welfare  depended.  He  seems 
never  to  have  noticed  that  the  State  was  neglecting 
this  duty,  and  that,  as  we  saw  just  now,  temples  and 
cults  were  falling  into  decay,  strange  forms  of  religion 
pressing  in.  Such  things  did  not  interest  him ;  in 
public  fife  the  State  religion  was  to  him  a  piece  of 
the  constitution,  to  be  maintained  where  it  was 
clearly  essential ;  in  his  own  study  it  was  a  matter  of 
philosophical  discussion.  In  his  young  days  he  was 
intimate  with  the  famous  Pontifex  Maximus,  Mucius 
Scaevola,  who  held  that  there  were  three  religions, — 
that  of  the  poets,  that  of  the  philosophers,  and  that  of 

1  See,  e.g.,  pro  Sestio,  15.  32  ;  in  Vatinium,  7.  18. 


324 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  statesman,  of  which  the  last  must  he  accepted 
and  acted  on,  whether  it  be  true  or  not.1  Cicero 
could  hardly  have  complained  if  this  saying  had  been 
attributed  to  himself. 

This  attitude  of  mind,  the  combination  of  perfect 
freedom  of  thought  with  full  recognition  of  the 
legal  obligations  of  the  State  and  its  citizens  in 
matters  of  religion,  is  not  difficult  for  any  one  to 
understand  who  is  acquainted  with  the  nature  of 
the  ius  divinum  and  the  priesthood  administering  it. 
That  ius  divinum  was  a  part  of  the  ius  civile,  the 
law  of  the  Roman  city-state;  as  the  ius  civile, 
exclusive  of  the  ius  divinum,  regulated  the  relations 
of  citizen  to  citizen,  so  did  the  ius  divinum  regulate 
the  relations  of  the  citizen  to  the  deities  of  the 
community.  The  priesthoods  administering  this  law 
consisted  not  of  sacrificing  priests,  attached  to  the 
cult  of  a  particular  god  and  temple,  but  of  lay 
officials  in  charge  of  that  part  of  the  law  of  the 
State ;  it  was  no  concern  of  theirs  (so  indeed  they 
might  quite  well  argue)  whether  the  gods  really 
existed  or  not,  provided  the  law  were  maintained. 
When  in  61  B.c.  Clodius  was  caught  in  disguise  at 
the  women’s  festival  of  the  Bona  Dea,  the  pontifices 
declared  the  act  to  be  nefas, — crime  against  the  ius 
divinum ;  but  we  may  doubt  whether  any  of  those 
pontifices  really  believed  in  the  existence  of  such  a 
deity.  The  idea  of  the  mos  maiorum  was  still  so 
strong  in  the  mind  of  every  true  Roman,  his  con- 

1  Augustine,  Civ.  Dei,  iv.  27. 


XI 


RELIGION 


325 


servative  instincts  were  so  powerful,  that  long  after 
all  real  life  had  left  the  divine  inhabitants  of  his 
city,  so  that  they  survived  only  as  the  dead  stalks 
of  plants  that  had  once  been  green  and  flourishing, 
he  was  quite  capable  of  being  horrified  at  any  open 
contempt  of  them.  And  he  was  right,  as  Augustus 
afterwards  saw  clearly ;  for  the  masses,  who  had  no 
share  in  the  education  described  in  the  sixth  chapter, 
who  knew  nothing  of  Greek  literature  or  philosophy, 
and  were  full  of  superstitious  fancies,  were  already 
losing  confidence  in  the  authorities  set  over  them, 
and  in  their  power  to  secure  the  good-will  of  the 
gods  and  their  favour  in  matters  of  material  well¬ 
being.  This  is  the  only  way  in  which  we  can 
satisfactorily  account  for  the  systematic  efforts  of 
Augustus  to  renovate  the  old  religious  rites  and 
priesthoods,  and  we  can  fairly  argue  back  from  it  to 
the  tendencies  of  the  generation  immediately  before 
him.  He  knew  that  the  proletariate  of  Rome  and 
Italy  still  believed,  as  their  ancestors  had  always 
believed,  that  state  and  individual  would  alike  suffer 
unless  the  gods  were  properly  propitiated ;  and  that 
in  order  to  keep  them  quiet  and  comfortable  the 
sense  of  duty  to  the  gods  must  be  kept  alive  even 
among  those  who  had  long  ceased  to  believe  in  them. 
It  was  fortunate  indeed  for  Augustus  that  he  found 
in  the  great  poet  of  Mantua  one  who  was  in  some 
sense  a  prophet  as  well  as  a  poet,  who  could  urge  the 
Roman  by  an  imaginative  example  to  return  to  a 
living  pietas, — not  merely  to  the  old  religious  forms, 


CHAP. 


326  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

but  to  the  intelligent  sense  of  duty  to  God  and  man 
which  had  built  up  his  character  and  his  empire.  In 
Cicero’s  day  there  was  also  a  great  poet,  he  too  in  some 
sense  a  prophet ;  but  Lucretius  could  only  appeal  to 
the  Roman  to  shake  off  the  slough  of  his  old  religion, 
and  such  an  appeal  was  at  the  time  both  futile  and 
dangerous.  Looking  at  the  matter  historically,  and 
not  theologically,  we  ought  to  sympathise  with  the 
attitude  of  Cicero  and  Scaevola  towards  the  religion 
of  the  State.  It  was  based  on  a  statesmanlike 
instinct ;  and  had  it  been  possible  for  that  instinct  to 
express  itself  practically  in  a  positive  policy  like  that 
of  Augustus,  instead  of  showing  itself  in  philosophical 
treatises  like  the  de  Legibus,  or  on  occasional  moments 
of  danger  like  that  of  the  Bona  Dea  sacrilege,  it  is 
quite  possible  that  much  mischief  might  have  been 
averted.  But  in  that  generation  no  one  had  the 
shrewdness  or  experience  of  Augustus,  and  no  one 
but  Julius  had  the  necessary  free  hand;  and  we  may 
be  almost  sure  that  Julius,  Pontifex  Maximus  though 
he  was,  was  entirely  unfitted  by  nature  and  experience 
to  undertake  a  work  that  called  for  such  delicate 
handling,  such  insight  into  the  working  of  the 
ignorant  Italian  mind. 

This  attitude  of  inconsistency  and  compromise 
must  seem  to  a  modern  unsatisfactory  and  strained, 
and  he  turns  writh  relief  to  the  courageous  out¬ 
spokenness  of  the  great  poem  of  Lucretius  on  the 
Nature  of  Things,  of  which  the  main  object  was  to 
persuade  the  Romans  to  renounce  for  good  all  the 


RELIGION 


XI 


327 


mass  of  superstition,  in  which  he  included  the  religion 
of  the  State,  by  which  their  minds  were  kept  in  a 
prison  of  darkness,  terror,  and  ignorance.  Lucretius 
took  no  part  whatever  in  public  life ;  he  could  afford 
to  be  in  earnest ;  he  felt  no  shadow  of  responsibility 
for  the  welfare  of  the  State  as  such.  The  Epicurean 
tenets  which  he  held  so  passionately  had  always 
ranked  the  individual  before  the  community,  and 
suggested  a  life  of  individual  quietism ;  Lucretius  in 
his  study  could  contemplate  the  “rerum  natura”  with¬ 
out  troubling  himself  about  the  “  natura  hominum  ” 
as  it  existed  in  the  Italy  of  his  day.  “  Felix  qui 
potuit  rerum  cognoscere  causas,” — so  wrote  of  him 
his  great  successor  and  admirer,  yet  added,  with  a 
tinge  of  pathos  which  touches  us  even  now, 
“  Fortunatus  et  ille  deos  qui  novit  agrestes.”  Even 
at  the  present  day  an  uncompromising  unbeliever 
may  be  touched  by  the  simple  worship,  half  pagan 
though  it  may  seem  to  him,  of  a  village  in  the 
Apennines ;  but  in  the  eyes  of  Lucretius  all  worship 
seemed  prompted  by  fear  and  based  on  ignorance  of 
natural  law.  Virgil's  tender  and  sympathetic  soul 
went  out  to  the  peasant  as  he  prayed  to  his  gods  for 
plenty  or  prosperity,  as  it  went  out  to  all  living 
creatures  in  trouble  or  in  joy. 

But  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  Lucretius  was  a 
great  religious  poet.  He  was  a  prophet,  in  deadly 
earnest,  calling  men  to  renounce  their  errors  both  of 
thought  and  conduct.  He  saw  around  him  a  world 
full  of  wickedness  and  folly ;  a  world  of  vanity, 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


328 

vexation,  fear,  ambition,  cruelty,  and  lust.  He  saw 
men  fearing  death  and  fearing  the  gods ;  overvaluing 
life,  yet  weary  of  it ;  unable  to  use  it  well,  because 
steeped  in  ignorance  of  the  wonderful  working  of 
Nature.1  He  saw  them,  as  we  have  already  seen 
them,  the  helpless  victims  of  ambition  and  avarice, 
ever,  like  Sisyphus,  rolling  the  stone  uphill  and  never 
reaching  the  summit.2  Of  cruelty  and  bloodshed  in 
civil  strife  that  age  had  seen  enough,  and  on  this 
too  the  poet  dwells  with  bitter  emphasis ; 3  on  the 
unwholesome  luxury  and  restlessness  of  the  upper 
classes,4  and  on  their  unrestrained  indulgence  of 
bodily  appetites.  In  his  magnificent  scorn  he  prob¬ 
ably  exaggerated  the  evils  of  his  day,  yet  we  have 
seen  enough  in  previous  chapters  to  suggest  that  he 
was  not  a  mere  pessimist ;  there  is  no  trace  in  his 
poem  of  cynicism,  or  of  a  soured  temperament.  We 
may  be  certain  that  he  was  absolutely  convinced  of 
the  truth  of  all  he  wrote. 

So  far  Lucretius  may  be  called  a  religious  poet, 
in  that  with  profound  conviction  and  passionate 
utterance  he  denounced  the  wickedness  of  his  age,  and, 
like  the  Hebrew  prophets,  called  on  mankind  to  put 
away  their  false  gods  and  degrading  superstitions, 
and  learn  the  true  secret  of  guidance  in  this  life.  It 
is  only  when  we  come  to  ask  what  that  secret  was, 
that  we  feel  that  this  extraordinary  man  knew  far  too 

1  Cp.  i.  63  foil.  ;  iii.  87  and  894  ;  v.  72  and  1218  ;  and  many  other 
passages.  2  iii.  995  foil.  ;  v.  1120  foil. 

*  iii.  70  ;  v.  1126.  4  ii.  22  foil.  ;  iii.  1003  ;  v.  1116. 


XI 


RELIGION 


329 


little  of  ordinary  human  nature  to  be  either  a  religious 
reformer  or  an  effective  prophet :  as  Sellar  has  said  of 
him,1  he  had  no  sympathy  with  human  activity.  His 
secret,  the  remedy  for  all  the  world’s  evil  and  misery, 
was  only  a  philosophical  creed,  which  he  had  learnt 
from  Epicurus  and  Democritus.  His  profound  belief 
in  it  is  one  of  the  most  singular  facts  in  literary 
history ;  no  man  ever  put  such  poetic  passion  into  a 
dogma,  and  no  such  imperious  dogma  was  ever  built 
upon  a  scientific  theory  of  the  universe.  He  seems 
to  have  combined  two  Italian  types  of  character, 
which  never  have  been  united  before  or  since, — that  of 
the  ecclesiastic,  earnest  and  dogmatic,  seeing  human 
nature  from  a  doctrinal  platform,  not  working  and 
thinking  with  it ;  and  secondly  the  poetic  type,  of 
which  Dante  is  the  noblest  example,  perfectly  clear 
and  definite  in  inward  and  outward  vision,  and 
illuminating  all  that  it  touches  with  an  indescribable 
glow  of  pure  poetic  imagination. 

Lucretius’  secret  then  is  knowledge,2 — not  the 
dilettanteism  of  the  day,  but  real  scientific  knowledge 
of  a  single  philosophical  attempt  to  explain  the  uni¬ 
verse, — the  atomic  theory  of  the  Epicurean  school. 
Democritus  and  Epicurus  are  the  only  saviours, — of 
this  Lucretius  never  had  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  As 
the  result  of  this  knowledge,  the  whole  supernatural 
and  spiritual  world  of  fancy  vanishes,  together  with 

1  Roman  Poets  of  the  Republic,  p.  306. 

2  The  secret  may  be  found  in  the  last  250  lines  of  Bk.  iii.,  and  at  the 
beginning  and  end  of  Bk.  v. 


330 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


all  futile  hopes  or  fears  of  a  future  life.  The  gods,  if 
they  exist,  will  cease  to  be  of  any  importance  to 
mankind,  as  having  no  interest  in  him,  and  doing  him 
neither  good  nor  harm.  Chimaeras,  portents,  ghosts, 
death,  and  all  that  frightens  the  ignorant  and  paralyses 
their  energies,  will  vanish  in  the  pure  light  of  this 
knowledge  ;  man  will  have  nothing  to  be  afraid  of 
but  himself.  Nor  indeed  need  he  fear  himself  when 
he  has  mastered  “the  truth.”  By  that  time,  as  the 
scales  of  fear  fall  from  his  eyes,  his  moral  balance 
will  be  recovered ;  the  blind  man  will  see.  What 
will  he  see  ?  What  is  the  moral  standard  that  will 
become  clear  to  him,  the  sanction  of  right  living  that 
will  grip  his  conscience  ? 

It  is  simply  the  conviction  that  as  this  life  is  all  we 
have  in  past,  present,  or  future,  it  must  be  used  well. 
After  all  then,  Lucretius  is  reduced  to  ordinary  moral 
suasion,  and  finds  no  new  power  or  sanction  that 
could  keep  erring  human  nature  in  the  right  path. 
And  we  must  sadly  allow  that  no  real  moral  end  is 
enunciated  by  him  ;  his  ideal  seems  to  be  quietism  in 
this  life,  and  annihilation  afterwards.1  It  is  a  purely 
self- regarding  rule  of  life.  It  is  not  even  a  social 
creed ;  neither  family  nor  State  seems  to  have  any 
part  in  it,  much  less  the  unfortunate  in  this  life,  the 
poor,  and  the  suffering.  The  poet  never  mentions 
slavery,  or  the  crowded  populations  of  great  cities. 
It  might  almost  be  called  a  creed  of  fatalism,  in 
which  Natura  plays  much  the  same  part  as  Fortuna 

1  v.  1203  ;  ii.  48-54. 


XI 


RELIGION 


33i 


did  in  the  creed  of  many  less  noble  spirits  of  that 
age.1  Nature  fights  on  ;  we  cannot  resist  her,  and 
cannot  improve  on  her ;  it  is  better  to  acquiesce 
and  obey  than  to  try  and  rule  her. 

Thus  Lucretius’  remedy  fails  utterly ;  it  is  that  of 
an  aristocratic  intellect,  not  of  a  saviour  of  mankind.2 
So  far  as  we  know,  it  was  entirely  fruitless ;  like  the 
constitution  of  Sulla  his  contemporary,  the  doctrine 
of  Lucretius  roused  no  sense  of  loyalty  in  Roman  or 
Italian,  because  it  was  constructed  with  imperfect 
knowledge  of  the  Roman  and  Italian  nature.  But  it 
was  a  noble  effort  of  a  noble  mind ;  and,  apart  from 
its  literary  greatness,  it  has  incidentally  a  lasting 
value  for  all  students  of  religious  history,  as  showing 
better  than  anything  else  that  has  survived  from  that 
age  the  need  of  a  real  consecration  of  morality  by  the 
life  and  example  of  a  Divine  man. 

Thus  while  the  Roman  statesman  found  it  necessary 
to  maintain  the  ius  divinum  without  troubling  him¬ 
self  to  attempt  to  put  any  new  life  into  the  details 
of  the  worship  it  prescribed,  content  to  let  much  of  it 
sink  into  oblivion  as  no  longer  essential  to  the  good 
government  of  the  State,  the  greatest  poetical  genius 
of  the  age  was  proclaiming  in  trumpet  tones  that  if  a 
man  would  make  good  use  of  his  life  he  must  abandon 
absolutely  and  without  a  scruple  the  old  religious  ideas 
of  the  Graeco-Roman  world.  But  there  was  another 

1  v.  1129. 

2  “  Philosophy  has  never  touched  the  mass  of  mankind  except  through 
religion  ”  {Decadence,  by  Rt.  Hon.  A.  J.  Balfour,  p.  53).  This  is  a  truth  of 
which  Lucretius  was  profoundly,  though  not  surprisingly,  ignorant. 


332 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


school  of  thought  which  had  long  been  occupied  with 
these  difficulties,  and  had  reached  conclusions  far 
better  suited  than  the  dogmatism  of  Lucretius  to  the 
conservative  character  of  the  Roman  mind,  for  it 
found  a  place  for  the  deities  of  the  State,  and  therefore 
for  the  ius  divinum,  in  a  philosophical  system  already 
widely  accepted  by  educated  men.  This  school  may 
be  described  as  Stoic,  though  its  theology  was  often 
accepted  by  men  who  did  not  actually  call  themselves 
Stoics ;  for  example,  by  Cicero  himself,  who,  as  an 
adherent  of  the  New  Academy,  the  school  which 
repudiated  dogmatism  and  occupied  itself  with 
dialectic  and  criticism,  was  perfectly  entitled  to 
adopt  the  tenets  of  other  schools  if  he  thought  them 
the  most  convincing.  Its  most  elaborate  exponent 
in  this  period  was  Varro,  and  behind  both  Varro  and 
Cicero  there  stands  the  great  figure  of  the  Rhodian 
Posidonius,1  of  whose  writings  hardly  anything  has 
come  down  to  us.  It  is  worth  while  to  trace  briefly 
the  history  of  this  school  at  Rome,  for  it  is  in  itself 
extremely  interesting,  as  an  attempt  to  reconcile  the 
old  theology — if  the  term  may  be  used — with  philo¬ 
sophical  thought,  and  it  probably  had  an  appreciable 
influence  on  the  later  quasi-religious  Stoicism  of  the 
Empire. 

We  must  go  back  for  a  moment  to  the  period 
succeeding  the  war  with  Hannibal.  The  awful 
experience  of  that  war  had  done  much  to  discredit 
the  old  Roman  religious  system,  which  had  been 

1  See  above,  p.  115. 


XI 


RELIGION 


333 


found  insufficient  of  itself  to  preserve  the  State. 
The  people,  excited  and  despairing,  had  been  quieted 
by  what  may  be  called  new  religious  prescriptions, 
innumerable  examples  of  which  are  to  be  found  in 
Livy’s  books.  The  Sibylline  books  were  constantly 
consulted,  and  lectisternia,  supplicationes,  ludi,  in 
which  Greek  deities  were  prominent,  were  ordered  and 
carried  out.  Finally,  in  204  b.c.,  there  was  brought  to 
Rome  the  sacred  stone  of  the  Magna  Mater  Idaea,  the 
great  deity  of  Pessinus  in  Phrygia,  and  a  festival  was 
established  in  her  honour,  called  by  the  Greek  name 
Megalesia.  All  this  means,  as  can  be  seen  clearly 
from  Livy’s  language,1  that  the  governing  classes 
were  trying  to  quiet  the  minds  of  the  people  by 
convincing  them  that  no  effort  was  being  spared  to 
set  right  their  relations  with  the  unseen  powers ; 
they  had  invoked  in  vain  their  own  local  and  native 
deities,  and  had  been  compelled  to  seek  help  else- 
wdiere ;  they  had  found  their  own  narrow  system  of 
religion  quite  inadequate  to  express  their  religious 
experience  of  the  last  twenty  years.  And  indeed 
that  old  system  of  religion  never  really  recovered 
from  the  discredit  thus  cast  on  it.  The  temper  of 
the  people  is  well  shown  by  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  orgiastic  worship  of  the  Greek  Dionysus  spread 
over  Italy  a  few  years  later ;  and  the  fact  that  it  was 
allowed  to  remain,  though  under  strict  supervision, 
shows  that  the  State  religion  no  longer  had  the 
power  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  the  masses.  And 

1  e.g.  xxi.  62. 


334 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


the  educated  class  too  was  rapidly  coming  under  the 
influence  of  Greek  thought,  which  could  hardly  act 
otherwise  than  as  a  solvent  of  the  old  religious  ideas. 
Ennius,  the  great  literary  figure  of  this  period,  was 
the  first  to  strike  a  direct  blow  at  the  popular  belief 
in  the  efficacy  of  prayer  and  sacrifice,  by  openly 
declaring  that  the  gods  did  not  interest  themselves 
in  mankind,1 — the  same  Epicurean  doctrine  preached 
afterwards  by  Lucretius.  It  may  indeed  be  doubted 
whether  this  doctrine  became  popular,  or  acceptable 
even  to  the  cultured  classes  ;  but  the  fact  remains 
that  the  same  man  who  did  more  than  any  one  before 
Virgil  to  glorify  the  Roman  character  and  dominion, 
was  the  first  to  impugn  the  belief  that  Rome  owed 
her  greatness  to  her  divine  inhabitants. 

But  in  the  next  generation  there  arrived  in  Rome 
a  man  whose  teaching  had  so  great  an  influence  on  the 
best  type  of  educated  Roman  that,  as  we  have  already 
said,  he  may  almost  be  regarded  as  a  missionary.2  AVe 
do  not  know  for  certain  whether  Panaetius  wrote  or 
taught  about  the  nature  or  existence  of  the  gods ; 
but  we  do  know  that  he  discussed  the  question  of 
divination  3  in  a  work  Tlept  irpovoia ?,  where  he  could 
hardly  have  avoided  the  subject.  In  any  case  the 
Stoic  doctrines  which  he  held,  themselves  ultimately 
derived  from  Plato  and  the  Old  Academy,  were  found 

1  Ribbeck,  Fragm.  Trag.  Bom.  p.  54  :  Ego  deum  genus  esse  semper  dixi 
et  dicam  coelitum,  Sed  eos  non  curare  opinor  quid  agat  humanum  genus. 

2  See  above,  p.  114. 

3  See  H.  N.  Fowler,  Panaetii  et  Hecatonis  librorum  fragmenta,  p.  10 ; 
Hirzel,  Untenuchungen  zu  Cicero's  philosophischen  Schrifttn,  i.  p.  194  foil. 


RELIGION 


335 


capable  in  the  hands  of  his  great  successor  Posidonius 
of  Rhodes  of  supplying  a  philosophical  basis  for  the 
activity  as  well  as  the  existence  of  the  gods.  These 
men,  it  must  be  repeated,  were  not  merely  professed 
philosophers,  but  men  of  the  world,  travellers,  writing 
on  a  great  variety  of  subjects ;  they  were  profoundly 
interested,  like  Polybius,  in  the  Roman  character  and 
government ;  they  became  intimate  with  the  finer 
Roman  minds,  from  Scipio  the  younger  to  Cicero  and 
Yarro,  and  seem  to  have  seen  clearly  that  the  old  rigid 
Stoicism  must  be  widened  and  humanised,  and  its 
ethical  and  theological  aspects  modified,  if  it  were  to 
gain  a  real  hold  on  the  practical  Roman  understand¬ 
ing.  We  have  already  seen 1 2  how  their  modified 
Stoic  ethics  acted  for  good  on  the  best  Romans  of 
our  period.  In  theology  also  they  left  a  permanent 
mark  on  Roman  thought ;  Posidonius  wrote  a  work 
on  the  gods,  which  formed  the  basis  of  the  speculative 
part  of  Yarro’s  Antiquitates  divinae,  and  almost 
certainly  also  of  the  second  book  of  Cicero’s  de 
Natura  Deorum }  Other  philosophers  of  the  period, 
even  if  not  professed  Stoics,  may  have  discussed  the 
same  subjects  in  their  lectures  and  writings,  arriving 
at  conclusions  of  the  same  kind. 

It  is  chiefly  from  the  fragments  of  Yarro’s  work 
that  we  learn  something  of  the  Stoic  attempt  to 
harmonise  the  old  religious  beliefs  with  philosophic 

1  See  above,  p.  115. 

2  Schmekel,  Die  Mittlere  Stoa,  p.  85  foil. ;  Hirzel,  Untersuchungen,  ete., 
i.  p.  194  foil. 


CHAP. 


336  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

theories  of  the  universe.1  Varro,  following  his 
teacher,  held  the  Stoic  doctrine  of  the  animus  mundi, 
the  Divine  principle  permeating  all  material  things, 
which,  in  combination  with  them,  constitutes  the 
universe,  and  is  Nature,  Reason,  God,  Destiny,  or 
whatever  name  the  philosopher  might  choose  to  give 
it.  The  universe  is  divine,  *the  various  parts  of  it 
are,  therefore,  also  divine,  in  virtue  of  this  informing 
principle.  Now  in  the  sixteenth  book  of  his  great 
work  Varro  co-ordinated  this  Stoic  theory  with  the 
Graeco-Roman  religion  of  the  State  as  it  existed  in 
his  time.  The  chief  gods  represented  the  partes 
mundi  in  various  ways ;  even  the  difference  of  sex 
among  the  deities  was  explained  by  regarding  male 
cods  as  emanating  from  the  heaven  and  female  ones 
from  the  earth,  according  to  a  familiar  ancient  idea 
of  the  active  and  passive  principle  in  generation. 
The  Stoic  doctrine  of  hai^iove^  was  also  utilised  to 
find  an  explanation  for  semi -deities,  lares,  genii, 
etc.,  and  thus  another  character  of  the  old  Italian 
religious  mind  was  to  be  saved  from  contempt  and 
oblivion.  The  old  Italian  tendency  to  see  the  super¬ 
natural  manifesting  itself  in  many  different  w^ays 
expressed  by  adjectival  titles,  e.g.  Mars  Silvanus, 
Jupiter  Elicius,  Juno  Lucina,  etc.,  also  found  an 
explanation  in  Varro’s  doctrine;  for  the  divine  element 
existing  in  sky,  earth,  sea,  or  other  parts  of  the 
mundus,  and  manifesting  itself  in  many  different 

1  The  fragments  are  collected  by  R.  Agahd,  Leipzig,  1898.  The  great 
majority  are  found  in  St.  Augustine,  de  Civitate  Dei. 


XI 


RELIGION 


337 


forms  of  activity,  might  be  thus  made  obvious  to  the 
ordinary  human  intellect  without  the  interposition 
of  philosophical  terms. 

At  the  head  of  the  whole  system  was  Jupiter,  the 
greatest  of  Roman  gods,  whose  title  of  Optimus 
Maximus  might  well  have  suggested  that  no  other 
deity  could  occupy  this  place.  Without  him  it 
would  have  been  practically  impossible  for  Varro  to 
carry  out  his  difficult  and  perilous  task.  Every 
Roman  recognised  in  Jupiter  the  god  who  con¬ 
descended  to  dwell  on  the  Capitol  in  a  temple  made 
with  hands,  and  who,  beyond  all  other  gods,  watched 
over  the  destinies  of  the  Roman  State ;  every  Roman 
also  knew  that  Jupiter  was  the  great  god  of  the 
heaven  above  him,  for  in  many  expressions  of  his 
ordinary  speech  he  used  the  god’s  name  as  a  synonym 
for  the  open  sky.1  The  position  now  accorded  to  the 
heaven -god  in  the  new  Stoic  system  is  so  curious 
and  interesting  that  we  must  dwell  on  it  for  a 
moment. 

Varro  held,  or  at  any  rate  taught,  that  Jupiter 
was  himself  that  soul  of  the  world  (animus  mundi) 
which  fills  and  moves  the  whole  material  universe.2 
He  is  the  one  universal  causal  agent,3  from  whom  all 


1  As  Wissowa  says  ( Religion  und  Kultus  der  Rorner,  p.  100),  Jupiter  does 
not  appear  in  Roman  language  and  literature  as  a  personality  who  thunders 
or  rains,  but  rather  as  the  heaven  itself  combining  these  various  manifest¬ 
ations  of  activity.  The  most  familiar  illustration  of  the  usage  alluded  to 
in  the  text  is  the  line  of  Horace  in  Odes  i.  1.  25  :  “manet  sub  love  frigido 
Venator.” 

2  ap.  Aug.  Civ.  Dei,  iv.  11. 


3  lb.  vii.  9. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


333 

the  forces  of  nature  are  derived ; 1  or  he  may  be 
called,  in  language  which  would  be  intelligible  to 
the  ordinary  Roman,  the  universal  Genius.2  Further, 
he  is  himself  all  the  other  gods  and  goddesses,  who 
may  be  described  as  parts,  or  powers,  or  virtues, 
existing  in  him.3  And  Varro  makes  it  plain  that  he 
wishes  to  identify  this  great  god  of  gods  with  the 
Jupiter  at  Rome,  whose  temple  was  on  the  Capitol ; 
St.  Augustine  quotes  him  as  holding  that  the  Romans 
had  dedicated  the  Capitol  to  Jupiter,  who  by  his 
spirit  breathes  life  into  everything  in  the  universe  : 4 
or  in  less  philosophical  language,  “  The  Romans  wish 
to  recognise  Jupiter  as  king  of  gods  and  men,  and 
this  is  shown  by  his  sceptre  and  his  seat  on  the 
Capitol.”  Thus  the  god  who  dwelt  on  the  Capitol, 
and  in  the  temple  which  was  the  centre-point  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  was  also  the  life-giving  ruler  and 
centre  of  the  whole  universe.  Nay,  he  goes  one  step 
further,  and  identifies  him  with  the  one  God  of  the 
monotheistic  peoples  of  the  East,  and  in  particular 
with  the  God  of  the  Jews.5 

Thus  Varro  had  arrived,  with  the  help  of  Posi¬ 
donius  and  the  Stoics,  at  a  monotheistic  view  of  the 
Deity,  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  kind  of  pantheism, 
and  yet,  strange  to  say,  is  able  to  accommodate  itself 
to  the  polytheism  of  the  Graeco-Roman  world.  But 

1  ap.  Aug.  Civ.  Dei,  vii.  13 :  animus  mundi  is  here  so  called,  but 
evidently  identified  with  Jupiter. 

J  lb.  vii.  9.  5  lb.  iv.  11,  13. 

*  Aug.  de  consensu  evangel,  i.  23.  24.  Cp.  Civ.  Dei,  iv.  9. 

*  Jb.  i.  22.  30  ;  Civ.  Dei,  xix.  22. 


XI 


RELIGION 


339 


without  Jupiter,  god  of  the  heaven  both  for  Greeks 
and  Romans,  and  now  too  in  the  eyes  of  both  peoples 
the  god  who  watched  over  the  destiny  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  this  wonderful  feat  could  not  have  been 
performed.  The  identification  of  the  heaven-god 
with  the  animus  mundi  of  the  Stoics  was  not  indeed 
a  new  idea  ;  it  may  be  traced  up  Stoic  channels  even 
to  Plato.  What  is  really  new  and  astonishing  is 
that  it  should  have  been  possible  for  a  conservative 
Roman  like  Yarro,  in  that  age  of  carelessness  and 
doubt,  to  bring  the  heaven-god,  so  to  speak,  down 
to  the  Roman  Capitol,  where  his  statue  was  to  be  seen 
sitting  between  Juno  and  Minerva,  and  yet  to  teach 
the  doctrine  that  he  was  the  same  deity  as  the  Jewish 
Jehovah,  and  that  both  were  identical  with  the 
Stoic  animus  mundi. 

But  did  Yarro  also  conceive  of  this  Jupiter  as 
a  deity  “  making  for  righteousness,”  or  acting  as  a 
sanction  for  morality  ?  It  would  not  have  been 
impossible  or  unnatural  for  a  Roman  so  to  think  of 
him,  for  of  all  the  Roman  deities  Jupiter  is  the  one 
whose  name  from  the  most  ancient  times  had  been 
used  in  oaths  and  treaties,  and  whose  numen  was 
felt  to  be  violated  by  any  public  or  private  breach 
of  faith.1  We  cannot  tell  how  far  Yarro  himself 
followed  out  this  line  of  thought,  for  the  fragments 
of  his  great  work  are  few  and  far  between.  But 
we  know  that  the  Roman  Stoics  saw  in  that  same 
universal  Power  or  Mind  which  Yarro  identified  with 

1  See  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultus,  p.  103. 


34° 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Jupiter  the  source  and  strength  of  law,  and  therefore 
of  morality ;  here  it  is  usually  called  reason,  ratio , 
the  working  of  the  eternal  and  immutable  Mind  of 
the  universe.  “  True  law  is  right  reason,”  says 
Cicero  in  a  noble  passage ; 1  and  goes  on  to  teach 
that  this  law  transcends  all  human  codes  of  law,  em¬ 
bracing  and  sanctioning  them  all ;  and  that  the  spirit 
inherent  in  it,  which  gives  it  its  universal  force,  is 
God  Himself.  In  another  passage,  written  towards 
the  end  of  his  life,  and  certainly  later  than  the  pub¬ 
lication  of  Varro’s  work,  he  goes  further  and  identifies 
this  God  with  Jupiter.2  “This  law,”  he  says,  “came 
into  being  simultaneously  with  the  Divine  Mind” 
(i.e.  the  Stoic  Reason) :  “  wherefore  that  true  and 
paramount  law,  commanding  and  forbidding,  is  the 
right  reason  of  almighty  J upiter”  (summi  Iovis).  Once 
more,  in  the  first  book  of  his  treatise  on  the  gods, 
he  quotes  the  Stoic  Chrysippus  as  teaching  that  the 
eternal  Power,  which  is  as  it  were  a  guide  in  the 
duties  of  life,  is  Jupiter  himself.3  It  is  characteristic 
of  the  Roman  that  he  should  think,  in  speculations 
like  these,  rather  of  the  law  of  his  State  than  of  the 
morality  of  the  individual,  as  emanating  from  that 
Rio-ht  Reason  to  which  he  might  give  the  name  of 
J  upiter :  I  have  been  unable  to  find  a  passage  in 

1  de  Hep.  iii.  22.  See  above,  p.  117. 

2  de  Legibus,  ii.  10. 

*  de  Nat.  Deor.  i.  15.  40  :  “  idem  etiam  legis  perpetuae  et  eternae  vim, 
quae  quasi  dux  vitae  et  magistra  officiorum  sit,  Iovem  dicit  esse,  eandemque 
fatalem  necessitatem  appellat,  sempitemam  rerum  futurarum  veritatem." 
Chrysippus  of  course  was  speaking  of  the  Greek  Zeus. 


XI 


RELIGION 


34i 


which  Cicero  attributes  to  this  deity  the  sanction  for 
individual  goodness,  though  there  are  many  that 
assert  the  belief  that  justice  and  the  whole  system 
of  social  life  depend  on  the  gods  and  our  belief  in 
them.1  But  the  Roman  had  never  been  conscious 
of  individual  duty,  except  in  relation  to  his  State,  or 
to  the  family,  which  was  a  living  cell  in  the  organism 
of  the  State.  In  his  eyes  law  was  rather  the  source 
of  morality  than  morality  the  cause  and  the  reason 
of  law ;  and  as  his  religion  was  a  part  of  the  law  of 
his  State,  and  thus  had  but  an  indirect  connection 
with  morality,  it  would  not  naturally  occur  to  him  that 
even  the  great  Jupiter  himself,  thus  glorified  as  the 
Reason  in  the  universe,  could  really  help  him  in  the 
conduct  of  his  life  qua  individual.  It  is  only  as  the 
source  of  legalised  morality  that  we  can  think  of 
Yarro’s  Jupiter  as  “  making  for  righteousness.” 

Less  than  twenty-five  years  after  Cicero’s  death, 
in  the  imagination  of  the  greatest  of  Roman  poets, 
Jupiter  was  once  more  brought  before  the  Roman 
world,  and  now  in  a  form  comprehensible  by  all 
educated  men,  whether  or  no  they  had  dabbled  in 
philosophy.  What  are  we  to  say  of  the  Jupiter  of 
the  Aeneid  ?  We  do  not  need  to  read  far  in  the  first 
book  of  the  poem  to  find  him  spoken  of  in  terms 
which  remind  us  of  Varro  :  “0  qui  res  hominumque 
deumque  Aeternis  regis  imperiis,”  are  the  opening 
words  of  the  address  of  Venus;  and  when  she  has 
finished, 

1  e.g.  de  Off.  iii.  28  ;  de  Nat.  Deor.  i.  116. 


342 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


Olli  subridens  hominum  sator  atque  deorum 
Yultu,  quo  caelum  tempestatesque  serenat, 

Oscula  libavit  natae,  dehinc  talia  fatur  ; 

“  Parce  metu,  Cytberea,  manent  immota  tuorum 
Fata  tibi.” 

Jupiter  is  here,  as  in  Varro’s  system,  the  prime  cause 
and  ruler  of  all  things,  and  he  also  holds  in  his  hand 
the  destiny  of  Rome  and  the  fortunes  of  the  hero 
who  was  to  lay  the  first  foundation  of  Rome’s 
dominion.  It  is  in  the  knowledge  of  his  will  that 
Aeneas  walks,  with  hesitating  steps,  in  the  earlier 
books,  in  the  later  ones  with  assured  confidence, 
towards  the  goal  that  is  set  before  him.  But  the 
lines  just  quoted  serve  well  to  show  how  different  is 
the  Jupiter  of  Virgil  from  the  universal  deity  of  the 
Roman  Stoic.  Beyond  doubt  Virgil  had  felt  the 
power  of  the  Stoic  creed ;  but  he  was  essaying  an 
epic  poem,  and  he  could  not  possibly  dispense  with 
the  divine  machinery  as  it  stood  in  his  great  Homeric 
model.  His  Jupiter  is  indeed,  as  has  been  lately 
said,1  “  a  great  and  wise  god,  free  from  the  tyrannical 
and  sensuous  characteristics  of  the  Homeric  Zeus,” 
in  other  words,  he  is  a  Roman  deity,  and  sometimes 
acts  and  speaks  like  a  grave  Roman  consul  of  the 
olden  time.  But  still  he  is  an  anthropomorphic  deity, 
a  purely  human  conception  of  a  personal  god-king ; 
in  these  lines  he  smiles  on  his  daughter  Venus 
and  kisses  her.  This  is  the  reason  why  Virgil  has 
throughout  his  poem  placed  the  Fates,  or  Destiny, 
in  close  relation  to  him,  without  definitely  explaining 

1  Glover,  Studies  in  Virgil ,  p.  275. 


XI 


RELIGION 


343 


that  relation.  Fate,  as  it  appears  in  the  Aeneid,  is 
the  Stoic  elfiapixev'n  applied  to  the  idea  of  Rome  and 
her  Empire ;  that  Stoic  conception  could  not  take 
the  form  of  Jupiter,  as  in  Varro’s  hands,  for  the  god 
had  to  be  modelled  on  the  Homeric  pattern,  not  on 
the  Stoic.  It  is  perhaps  not  going  too  far  to  say 
that  the  god,  as  a  theological  conception,  never 
recovered  from  this  treatment ;  any  chance  he  ever 
had  of  becoming  the  centre  of  a  real  religious  system 
was  destroyed  by  the  Aeneid,  the  pietas  of  whose 
hero  is  indeed  nominally  due  to  him,  but  in  reality 
to  the  decrees  of  Fate.1 

While  philosophers  and  poets  were  thus  performing 
intellectual  and  imaginative  feats  with  the  gods  of 
the  State,  the  strong  tendency  to  superstition,  un¬ 
tutored  fear  of  the  supernatural,  which  had  always 
been  characteristic  of  the  Italian  peoples,  so  far  from 
losing  power,  was  actually  gaining  it,  and  that  not 
only  among  the  lower  classes.  As  Lucretius  mock¬ 
ingly  said,  even  those  who  think  and  speak  with 
contempt  of  the  gods  will  in  moments  of  trouble 
slay  black  sheep  and  sacrifice  them  to  the  Manes. 
This  feeling  of  fear  or  nervousness,  which  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  religio,2  had  been 

1  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  religious  revival  of  Augustus 
Jupiter  by  no  means  has  a  leading  place.  See  Carter,  Religion  of  Numa, 
p.  160,  where,  however,  the  attitude  of  Augustus  towards  the  great  god 
is  perhaps  over- emphasised.  On  the  relation  of  Virgil’s  Jupiter  to  Fate, 
see  E.  'Nor den,  Virgils  epische  Technik,  p.  286  foil.  Seneca,  it  is  worth 
noting,  never  mentions  Jupiter  as  the  centre  of  the  Stoic  Pantheon. — Dill, 
Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  M.  Aurelius,  p.  331. 

*  See  an  article  by  the  author  in  Hilbert  Journal,  July  1907,  p.  847. 


344 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


quieted  in  the  old  days  by  the  prescriptions  of  the 
pontifices  and  their  jus  divinum,  but  it  was  always 
ready  to  break  out  again  ;  as  we  have  seen,  in  the 
long  and  awful  struggle  of  the  Hannibalic  "war,  it 
was  necessary  to  go  far  beyond  the  ordinary  pharma¬ 
copoeia  within  reach  of  the  priesthoods  in  order  to 
convince  the  people  that  all  possible  means  were 
being  taken  for  their  salvation.  Again,  in  this  last 
age  of  the  Republic,  there  are  obvious  signs  that 
both  ignorant  and  educated  were  affected  by  the 
gloom  and  uncertainty  of  the  times.  Increasing 
uncertainty  in  the  political  world,  increasing  doubt 
in  the  world  of  thought,  very  naturally  combined  to 
produce  an  emotional  tendency  which  took  different 
forms  in  men  of  different  temperament.  We  can 
trace  this  (l)  in  the  importance  attached  to  omens, 
portents,  dreams  ;  (2)  in  a  certain  vague  thought  of 
a  future  life,  which  takes  a  positive  shape  in  the 
deification  of  human  beings  ;  (3)  at  the  close  of  the 
period,  in  something  approaching  to  a  sense  of  sin, 
of  neglected  duty,  bringing  down  upon  State  and 
individual  the  anger  of  the  gods. 

1.  If  we  glance  over  the  latter  part  of  the  book  of 
prodigies,  compiled  by  the  otherwise  unknown  writer 
Julius  Obsequens  from  the  records  of  the  pontifices 
quoted  in  Livy’s  history,  we  can  get  a  fair  idea  of 
the  kind  of  portent  that  was  troubling  the  popular 
mind.  They  are  much  the  same  as  they  always 
had  been  in  Roman  history, — earthquakes,  monstrous 
births,  temples  struck  by  lightning,  statues  over- 


XI 


RELIGION 


345 


thrown,  wolves  entering  the  city,  and  so  on ;  they 
are  extremely  abundant  in  the  terrible  years  of  the 
Social  and  Civil  Wars,  become  less  frequent  after  the 
death  of  Sulla,  and  break  out  again  in  full  force  with 
the  murder  of  Caesar.  They  were  reported  to  the 
pontifices  from  the  places  where  they  were  supposed 
to  have  occurred,  and  if  thought  worthy  of  expiation 
were  entered  in  the  pontifical  books.  We  may 
suppose  that  they  were  sent  in  chiefly  by  the  unedu¬ 
cated.  But  among  men  of  education  we  have  many 
examples  of  this  same  nervousness,  of  which  two 
or  three  must  suffice.  Sulla,  as  we  know  from  his 
own  Memoirs,  which  were  used  directly  or  indirectly 
by  Plutarch,  had  a  strong  vein  of  superstition  in  his 
nature,  and  made  no  attempt  to  control  it.  In 
dedicating  his  Memoirs  to  Lucullus  he  advised  him 
“  to  think  no  course  so  safe  as  that  which  is  enjoined 
by  the  Sai/Mcov  (perhaps  his  genius)  in  the  night  ”  ; 1 
and  Plutarch  tells  us  several  tales  of  portents  on 
which  he  acted,  evidently  drawn  from  this  same 
autobiography.  We  are  told  of  him  that  he  always 
carried  a  small  image  of  Apollo,  which  he  kissed  from 
time  to  time,  and  to  which  he  prayed  silently  in 
moments  of  danger.2  Again,  Cicero  tells  us  a  curious 
story  of  himself,  Yarro,  and  Cato,  which  shows  that 
those  three  men  of  philosophical  learning  were  quite 
liable  to  be  frightened  by  a  prophecy  which  to  us 
would  not  seem  to  have  much  claim  to  respect.3  He 

s  Valerius  Maximus  ii.  3. 

5  de  Div.  i.  32.  68. 


1  Plut.  Sulla,  6. 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


346 

tells  how  when  the  three  were  at  Dyrrachium,  after 
Caesar’s  defeat  there  and  the  departure  of  the  armies 
into  Thessaly,  news  was  brought  them  by  the  com¬ 
mander  of  the  Rhodian  fleet  that  a  certain  rower 
had  foretold  that  within  thirty  days  Greece  would 
be  weltering  in  blood  ;  how  all  three  were  terribly 
frightened,  and  how  a  few  days  later  the  news  of 
the  battle  at  Pharsalia  reached  them.  Lastly,  we 
all  remember  the  vision  which  appeared  to  Brutus 
on  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Philippi,  of  a  huge  and 
fearsome  figure  standing  by  him  in  silence,  which 
Shakespeare  has  made  into  the  ghost  of  Caesar  and 
used  to  unify  his  play.  According  to  Plutarch,  the 
Epicurean  Cassius,  as  Lucretius  would  have  done, 
attempted  to  convince  his  friend  on  rational  grounds 
that  the  vision  need  not  alarm  him,  but  apparently 
in  vain.1 

2.  Lucretius  had  denied  the  doctrine  of  the  im¬ 
mortality  of  the  soul,  as  the  cause  of  so  much  of  the 
misery  which  he  believed  it  to  be  his  mission  to  avert. 
Caesar,  in  the  speech  put  into  his  mouth  by  Sallust, 
in  the  debate  on  the  execution  of  the  conspirators  on 
December  5,  63,  seems  to  be  of  the  same  opinion,  and 
as  Cicero  alludes  to  his  words  in  the  speech  with 
which  he  followed  Caesar,  we  may  suppose  that 
Sallust  was  reporting  him  rightly.2  The  poet  and 
the  statesman  were  not  unlike  in  the  way  in  which 
they  looked  at  facts  ;  both  were  of  clear  strong  vision, 
without  a  trace  of  mysticism.  But  such  men  were 

1  Plut.  Brutus,  36,  37.  2  Sail.  Cat.  51  ;  Cic.  Cat.  ir.  4.  7. 


XI 


RELIGION 


347 


the  exception  rather  than  the  rule ;  Cicero  probably 
represents  better  the  average  thinking  man  of  his 
time.  Cicero  was  indeed  too  full  of  life,  too  deeply 
interested  in  the  living  world  around  him,  to  think 
much  of  such  questions  as  the  immortality  of  the 
soul ;  and  as  a  professed  follower  of  the  Academic 
school,  he  assuredly  did  not  hold  any  dogmatic 
opinion  on  it.  He  was  at  no  time  really  affected  by 
Pythagoreanism,  like  his  friend  Nigidius  Figulus, 
whose  works,  now  lost,  had  a  great  vogue  in  the 
later  years  of  Cicero’s  life,  and  much  influence  on  the 
age  that  followed.  In  the  first  book  of  his  Tusculan 
Disputations  Cicero  discusses  the  question  from  the 
Academic  point  of  view,  coming  to  no  definite 
conclusion,  except  that  whether  we  are  immortal  or 
not  we  must  be  grateful  to  death  for  releasing  us 
from  the  bondage  of  the  body.  This  book  was 
written  in  the  last  year  of  his  life ;  but  ten  years 
earlier,  in  the  beautiful  myth,  imitated  from  the 
myths  of  Plato,  which  he  appended  to  his  treatise  de 
Republica,  he  had  emphatically  asserted  the  doctrine. 
There  the  spirit  of  the  elder  Scipio  appears  to  his 
great  namesake,  Cicero’s  ideal  Roman,  and  assures 
him  that  the  road  to  heaven  (caelum)  lies  open  to 
those  who  do  their  duty  in  this  life,  and  especially  their 
duty  to  the  State.  “  Know  thyself  to  be  a  god  ;  as  the 
god  of  gods  rules  the  universe,  so  the  god  within  us 
rules  the  body,  and  as  that  great  god  is  eternal,  so 
does  an  eternal  soul  govern  this  frail  body.”  1 

1  Cic.  de  Rep.  iv.  24. 


CHAP. 


348  SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 

The  Somnium  Scipionis  was  an  inspiration,  written 
under  the  influence  of  Plato  at  one  of  those  emotional 
moments  of  Cicero’s  life  which  make  it  possible  to 
say  of  him  that  there  was  a  religious  element  in  his 
mind.1  Some  years  later  the  poignancy  of  his  grief 
at  the  death  of  his  daughter  Tullia  had  the  effect  of 
putting  him  again  in  a  strong  emotional  mood.  For 
many  weeks  he  lived  alone  at  Astura,  on  the  edge  of 
the  Pomptine  marshes,  out  of  reach  of  all  friends, 
forbidding  even  his  young  wife  and  her  mother  to 
come  near  him  ;  brooding,  as  it  would  seem,  on  the 
survival  of  the  godlike  element  in  his  daughter. 
These  sad  meditations  took  a  practical  form  which  at 
first  astonishes  us,  but  is  not  hard  to  understand 
when  we  have  to  come  to  know  Cicero  well,  and  to 
follow  the  tendencies  of  thought  in  these  years.  He 
might  erect  a  tomb  to  her  memory, — but  that  would 
not  satisfy  him  ;  it  would  not  express  his  feeling  that 
the  immortal  godlike  spark  within  her  survived.  He 
earnestly  entreats  Atticus  to  find  and  buy  him  a  piece 
of  ground  where  he  can  build  a  fanum,  i.e.  a  shrine, 
to  her  spirit.  “  I  wish  to  have  a  shrine  built,  and 
that  wish  cannot  be  rooted  out  of  my  heart.  I  am 
anxious  to  avoid  any  likeness  to  a  tomb  ...  in 
order  to  attain  as  nearly  as  possible  to  an  apotheosis.”  2 
A  little  further  on  he  calls  these  foolish  ideas ;  but 
this  is  doubtless  only  because  he  is  writing  to  Atticus, 
a  man  of  the  world,  not  given  to  emotion  or  mysticism. 


Reid,  The  Academics  of  Cicero,  Introduction,  p.  18. 
2  ad  Att.  xii.  36. 


XI 


RELIGION 


349 


Cicero  is  really  speaking  the  language  of  the  Italian 
mind,  for  the  moment  free  from  philosophical  specula¬ 
tion  ;  he  believes  that  his  beloved  dead  lived  on, 
though  he  could  not  have  proved  it  in  argument.  So 
firmly  does  he  believe  it  that  he  wishes  others  to  know 
that  he  believes  it,  and  insists  that  the  shrine  shall  be 
erected  in  a  frequented  place  ! 1 

Though  the  great  Dictator  did  not  believe  in 
another  world,  he  consented  at  the  end  of  his  life  to 
become  Jupiter  Julius,  and  after  his  death  was  duly 
canonised  as  Divus,  and  had  a  temple  erected  to  him. 
But  the  many-sided  question  of  the  deification  of  the 
Caesars  cannot  be  discussed  here  ;  it  is  only  mentioned 
as  showing  in  another  way  the  trend  of  thought  in 
this  dark  age  of  Roman  history.  Whatever  some 
philosophers  may  have  thought,  there  cannot  be  a 
doubt  that  the  ordinary  Roman  believed  in  the  god¬ 
head  of  Julius.2 

3.  We  saw  in  an  earlier  chapter  with  what  gay 
and  heedless  frivolity  young  men  like  Caelius  were 
amusing  themselves  even  on  the  very  eve  of  civil  war. 
In  strange  contrast  with  this  is  the  gloom  that  over¬ 
spread  all  classes  during  the  war  itself,  and  more 
especially  after  the  assassination  of  the  Dictator. 
Caesar  seemed  irresistible  and  godlike,  and  men  were 
probably  beginning  to  hope  for  some  new  and  more 
stable  order  of  things,  when  he  was  suddenly  struck 
down,  and  the  world  plunged  again  into  confusion  and 

1  ad  Att.  xii.  37. 

*  Suetonius,  Jul.  88.  See  E.  Komemann  in  Klio,  vol.  i.  p.  95. 


350 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP. 


doubt ;  and  it  was  not  till  after  the  final  victory  of 
Octavian  at  Actium,  and  the  destruction  of  the 
elements  of  disunion  with  the  deaths  of  Antony  and 
Cleopatra,  that  men  really  began  to  hope  for  better 
times.  The  literature  of  those  melancholy  years 
shows  distinct  signs  of  the  general  depression,  which 
was  perhaps  something  more  than  weariness  and 
material  discomfort ;  there  was  almost  what  we  may 
call  a  dim  sense  of  sin,  or  at  least  of  moral  evil,  such 
a  feeling,  though  far  less  real  and  intense,  as  that 
which  their  prophets  aroused  from  time  to  time  in  the 
Jewish  people,  and  one  not  unknown  in  the  history  of 
Hellas. 

The  most  touching  expression  of  this  feeling  is  to 
be  found  in  the  preface  which  Livy  prefixed  to  his 
history — a  wonderful  example  of  the  truth  that  when 
a  great  prose  writer  is  greatly  moved,  his  language  re¬ 
flects  his  emotion  in  its  beauty  and  earnestness.  Every 
student  knows  the  sentence  in  which  he  describes  the 
gradual  decay  of  all  that  was  good  in  the  Roman 
character :  “  donee  ad  haec  tempora,  quibus  nec  vitia 
nostra  nec  remedia  pati  possumus,  perventum  est  ”  ; 
but  it  is  not  every  student  who  can  recognise  in  it  a 
real  sigh  of  despair,  an  unmistakable  token  of  the 
sadness  of  the  age.1  In  the  introductory  chapters 
which  serve  the  purpose  of  prefaces  to  the  Jugurtha 
and  Catiline  of  Sallust,  we  find  something  of  the 

1  We  do  not  know  exactly  when  this  preface  was  written.  Prefaces  are 
now  composed,  as  a  rule,  when  a  work  is  finished  :  but  this  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  the  practice  in  antiquity,  and  internal  evidence  is  here  strongly  in 
favour  of  an  early  date. 


XI 


RELIGION 


35i 


same  sad  tone,  but  it  does  not  ring  true  like  Livy’s 
exordium  ;  Sallust  was  a  man  of  altogether  coarser 
fibre,  and  seems  to  be  rather  assuming  than  expressing 
the  genuine  feeling  of  a  saddened  onlooker.  In  one 
of  his  earliest  poems,  written  perhaps  after  the 
Perusian  war  of  41  b.c.1  even  the  lively  Horace  was 
moved  to  voice  the  prevailing  depression,  fancifully 
urging  that  the  Italian  people  should  migrate,  like 
the  Phocaeans  of  old,  to  the  far  west,  where,  as 
Sertorius  had  been  told  in  Spain,  lay  the  islands  of 
the  blest,  where  the  earth,  as  in  the  golden  age,  yields 
all  her  produce  untilled  ': 

Iuppiter  ilia  piae  secrevit  litora  genti 
Ut  inquinavit  aere  tempus  aureum  ; 

Aere,  dehinc  ferro  duravit  saecula,  quorum 
Piis  secunda  vate  me  datur  fuga. 

It  may  be,  as  has  recently  been  suggested,  that 
the  famous  fourth  Eclogue  of  Virgil,  “  the  Messianic 
Eclogue,”  was  in  some  sense  meant  as  an  answer  to 
this  poem  of  Horace.  “  There  is  no  need,”  he  seems 
to  say  in  that  poem,  written  in  the  year  39,  “to  seek 
the  better  age  in  a  fabled  island  of  the  west.  It  is 
here  and  now  with  us.  The  period  upon  which  Italy 
is  now  entering  more  than  fulfils  in  real  life  the  dream 
of  a  Golden  Age.  A  marvellous  child  is  even  now 
coming  into  the  world  who  will  see  and  inaugurate 
an  era  of  peace  and  prosperity  :  darkness  and  despair 
will  after  a  while  pass  entirely  away,  and  a  regenerate 
Italy, — -regenerate  in  religion  and  morals  as  in  fertility 

1  Epode  16.  54  ;  cp.  30  foil. 


352 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


CHAP.  XI 


and  wealth,— will  lead  the  world  in  a  new  era  of 
happiness  and  good  government.”1 

But  the  Golden  Age,  so  fondly  hoped  for,  so 
vaguely  and  poetically  conceived,  was  not  to  come  in 
the  sense  in  which  Virgil,  or  any  other  serious  thinker 
of  the  day,  could  dream  of  it.  I  may  conclude  this 
chapter  with  a  few  sentences  which  express  this  most 
truly  and  eloquently.  “  When  there  is  a  fervent 
aspiration  after  better  things,  springing  from  a  strong 
feeling  of  human  brotherhood,  and  a  firm  belief  in  the 
goodness  and  righteousness  of  God,  such  aspiration 
carries  with  it  an  invincible  confidence  that  some 
how,  some  where,  some  when,  it  must  receive  its  com¬ 
plete  fulfilment,  for  it  is  prompted  by  the  Spirit  which 
fills  and  orders  the  Universe  throughout  its  whole 
development.  But  if  the  human  organ  of  inspiration 
goes  on  to  fix  the  how,  the  where,  and  the  when,  and 
attributes  to  some  nearer  object  the  glory  of  the  final 
blessedness,  then  it  inevitably  falls  into  such  mistakes 
as  Virgil's,  and  finds  its  golden  age  in  the  rule  of  the 
Caesars  (which  was  indeed  an  essential  feature  of 
Christianity),  or  perhaps,  as  in  later  days,  in  the 
establishment  of  socialism  or  imperialism.  Well  for 
the  seer  if  he  remembers  that  the  kingdom  of  God  is 
within  us,  and  that  the  true  golden  age  must  have  its 
foundation  in  penitence  for  misdoing,  and  be  built  up 
in  righteousness  and  lovingkindness.  ”  2 

O  o 


1  Sir  W.  M.  Ramsay,  quoted  in  Virgil’s  Messianic  Eclogue,  p.  54. 
2  Dr.  J.  B.  Mayor,  in  Virgil's  Messianic  Eclogue,  p.  118  folL 


EPILOGUE 


These  sketches  of  social  life  at  the  close  of  the 
Republican  period  have  been  written  without  any 
intention  of  proving  a  point,  or  any  pre-conceived 
idea  of  the  extent  of  demoralisation,  social,  moral,  or 
political,  which  the  Roman  people  had  then  reached. 
But  a  perusal  of  Mr.  Balfour’s  suggestive  lecture  on 
“  Decadence  ”  has  put  me  upon  making  a  very  succinct 
diagnosis  of  the  condition  of  the  patient  whose  life 
and  habits  I  have  been  describing.  The  Romans,  and 
the  Italians,  with  whom  they  were  now  socially  and 
politically  amalgamated,  were  not  in  the  last  two 
centuries  b.c.  an  old  or  worn-out  people.  It  is  at 
any  rate  certain  that  for  a  century  after  the  war  with 
Hannibal  Rome  and  her  allies,  under  the  guidance  of 
the  Roman  senate,  achieved  an  amount  of  work  in 
the  Way  of  war  and  organisation  such  as  has  hardly 
been  performed  by  any  people  before  or  since ;  and 
even  in  the  period  dealt  with  in  this  book,  in  spite  of 
much  cause  for  misgiving  at  home,  the  work  done  by 
Roman  and  Italian  armies  both  in  East  and  West 
shows  beyond  doubt  that  under  healthy  discipline  the 
native  vigour  of  the  population  could  assert  itself. 

353  2  A 


354 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


We  must  not  forget,  however  severely  we  may  con¬ 
demn  the  way  in  which  the  work  was  done,  that  it  is 
to  these  armies,  in  all  human  probability,  that  we  owe 
not  only  the  preservation  of  Graeco-Italian  culture 
and  civilisation,  but  the  opportunity  for  further 
progress.  The  establishment  of  definite  frontiers  by 
Pompeius  and  Caesar,  and  afterwards  by  Augustus 
and  Tiberius,  brought  peace  to  the  region  of  the  Medi¬ 
terranean,  and  with  it  made  possible  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  Roman  law  and  the  growth  of  a  new  and 
life-giving  religion. 

But  peoples,  like  individuals,  if  offered  opportunities 
of  doing  themselves  physical  or  moral  damage,  are 
only  too  ready  to  accept  them.  Time  after  time  in 
these  chapters  we  have  had  to  look  back  to  the  age 
following  the  war  with  Hannibal  in  order  to  see  what 
those  opportunities  were ;  and  in  each  case  we  have 
found  the  acceptance  rapid  and  eager.  We  have  seen 
wealth  coming  in  suddenly,  and  misused  ;  slave-labour 
available  in  an  abnormal  degree,  and  utilised  with 
results  in  the  main  unfortunate  ;  the  population  of 
the  city  increasing  far  too  quickly,  yet  the  difficulties 
arising  from  this  increase  either  ignored  or  mis¬ 
apprehended.  We  have  noticed  the  decay  of  whole¬ 
some  family  life,  of  the  useful  influence  of  the  Roman 
matron,  of  the  old  forms  of  the  State  religion ;  the 
misconception  of  the  true  end  of  education,  the  result 
partly  of  Greek  culture,  partly  of  political  life ;  and 
to  these  may  perhaps  be  added  an  increasing  liability 
to  diseases,  and  especially  to  malaria,  arising  from 


EPILOGUE 


355 


economic  blunders  in  Italy  and  insanitary  conditions 
of  life  in  the  city.  All  these  opportunities  of  damage 
to  the  fibre  of  the  people  had  been  freely  accepted, 
and  with  the  result  that  in  the  age  of  Cicero  we  can¬ 
not  mistake  the  signs  and  symptoms  of  degeneracy. 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  jump  to  the  conclusion 
that  this  degeneracy  had  as  yet  gone  too  far  to  be 
arrested.  It  was  assuredly  not  that  degeneracy  of 
senility  which  Mr.  Balfour  is  inclined  to  postulate  as 
an  explanation  of  decadence.  So  far  as  I  can  judge, 
the  Romans  were  at  that  stage  when,  in  spite  of 
unhealthy  conditions  of  life  and  obstinate  persistence 
in  dangerous  habits,  it  was  not  too  late  to  reform  and 
recover.  To  me  the  main  interest  of  the  history  of 
the  early  Empire  lies  in  seeking  the  answer  to  the 
question  how  far  that  recovery  was  made.  If  these 
chapters  should  have  helped  any  student  to  prepare 
the  ground  for  the  solution  of  this  problem  their 
object  will  have  been  fully  achieved. 


2  a  2 


INDEX 


Accius,  305,  306,  307,  312 
Aedicuia,  29 

Aediles,  the,  36,  295,  296 

Aemilia,  Via.  See  Via  Aemilia 

Aemilius,  Pons.  See  Pons  AemiHus 

Aeneas,  2,  141,  342 

Aerarium,  the,  20,  67 

Aesopus,  the  actor,  307,  313-315 

Afranius,  305,  306 

Africa,  province  of,  36 

Agrippa,  40 

Alexandria,  35 

Alexis  (Atticus’s  slave),  224 

Amafinius,  122 

Ambitu,  lex  de,  303 

Anio,  the  river,  41 

Anna  Perenna,  festival  of,  289 

Annona,  38 

Antioch,  35 

Antiochus  (the  physician),  270 
Antium,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  259 
Antony,  212,  256 
Apodyterium,  244,  255,  275,  276 
Apollinares,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Apolli- 
nares 

Apollonia,  35 

Appia,  Via.  See  Via  Appia 
Appius  Claudius  Caecus,  41 
Aqua  Appia,  41 
Aqua  Tepula,  42 
Aqueducts,  40,  41,  42 
Ara  maxima,  2,  13 
Ara  Pacis,  108 
Argentarii,  80  ff. 

Argiletum,  the,  3,  18,  25,  26 
Arpinum,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  253,  260 
Ars  amatoria  (Ovid's),  238,  309 
Arval  brothers,  the,  6,  321 
Arx,  the,  1  n.,  17 
Asia,  province  of,  88 
Astura,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  259,  348 
Atellanae,  fabulcie.  See  Fabulae  Atel- 
lanae 


Atrium,  241,  254,  278  ;  sutorium,  53; 
Vestae,  19 

Atticus,  house  of,  25 ;  wealth  of, 
62-64;  as  money-lender,  83-84; 
the  sister  of,  152  ;  the  slave  of, 
224  ;  Cicero’s  letters  to,  passim 
Augury,  322,  323 

Augustus,  alleged  proposal  of,  to 
remove  the  capital,  9  ;  attitude  of, 
towards  plebs  urbana,  38  ;  water- 
supply  under,  40  ;  the  grandfather 
of,  81  ?i.  ;  as  a  social  reformer,  95  ; 
marriage  laws  of,  149-150  ;  furthers 
public  comfort,  237-238  ;  restora¬ 
tion  of  temples  by,  321 ;  attempts 
at  religious  revival,  325 
Aventine  hill,  3,  4,  14,  24,  41,  55 

Baiae,  257 

Balbus,  Cornelius,  the  younger,  308 
Bankruptcy  laws,  57,  59 
Basilicae,  the,  19,  74 
Baths,  public,  276  n. 

Bath-rooms,  255,  275 
Bauli,  257 

Bithynia,  province  of,  77-79,  94 
Blanditia,  271 

Bona  Dea,  festival  of,  324,  326 
Boscoreale,  261,  276 
Brutus  (Cicero’s),  110 
Brutus,  Decimus,  89  n.,  125,  346 
Bulla,  193 
Byzantium,  9 

Caecilius,  228,  305 
Caelian  hill,  4,  15,  24 
Caelius  Antipater,  111 
Caelius  (M.)  Rufus,  29,  126-128  ff. , 
155,  161,  194,  195,  221,  296,  297 
and  passim 

Caesar,  Julius,  alleged  proposal  of, 
to  remove  the  capital,  9  ;  extends 
one  of  the  Basilicae,  19 ;  reduces 


357 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


corn  gratuities,  38  ;  regulations  of, 
for  the  government  of  the  city,  55  ; 
debts  of,  62  ;  character  of,  101-102  ; 
as  historian,  111  ;  joined  by  Caelius, 
130  ;  restores  credit  in  Italy,  131  ; 
and  Cleopatra,  158  ;  clemency  of, 
161  ;  sale  of  prisoners  by,  207  ; 
dismisses  surrendered  armies,  208  ; 
foundation  at  Corinth  by,  228  ; 
entertained  by  Cicero,  275  ;  habits 
of,  283  ;  as  aedile,  296  ;  summons 
Publilius  to  Rome,  317  ;  as  Ponti- 
fex  Maximus,  326  ;  speech  of,  in 
Sallust,  346  ;  consents  to  be  deified, 
349  ;  and  passim 
Calceus,  53 

Caldarium,  244,  255,  275,  276 
Calvus,  128 
Camillus,  9 
Campagna,  the,  15 
Campania,  6,  7,  161 
Campus  Martius,  3,  22,  194,  289,  300, 
311 

Caninius,  274 

Capena,  Porta.  See  Porta  Capena 
Capital  at  Rome,  65  ff. 

Capitol,  the,  2,  3,  15,  338 
Capitoline  hill,  In.,  4,  17 
Capua,  7 

Carceres,  the,  13,  301 
Carinae,  the,  25 

Carmentalis,  Porta.  See  Porta  Car- 
mentalis 

Castella,  42 

Castor,  temple  of,  19,  211 
Catiline,  128,  210,  226,  228 
Cato  major,  68,  1U3,  176,  177,  191, 
212,  217-219,  280 

Cato  minor,  2,  76,  109,  113  n.,  115, 
116,  120,  122,  158,  171  ff. 

Catullus,  109,  128,  143,  155 
Catulus  the  elder,  111 
Cena,  273,  277,  281,  283,  284 
Censor,  the,  71,  229,  310 
Censor ia  localio,  71 
Ceres,  136 

Ceriales,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Ceriales 
Cethegus,  157 
Chariot-racing,  301.  302 
•Chrysippus,  340 

Cicero,  birthplace  of,  10 ;  house  of, 
17  ;  borrows  money,  62  ;  as  a  man 
of  business,  74  ff.  ;  and  the  publi- 
cani,  76  ff.  ;  relation  of,  to  the 
governing  aristocracy,  97  ff. ;  letters 
of,  112  ;  as  a  philosopher,  113  ff.  ; 
and  Clodia,  155  ;  views  on  educa¬ 
tion,  174  ff.  ;  influence  of  philoso¬ 


phers  upon,  199 ;  and  the  slave 
question,  207 ;  and  the  use  of  slaves 
for  seditious  purposes,  226  ;  villas 
of,  251  ff'.  ;  undertakes  the  Ludi 
Romani,  296  ;  religious  views  of, 
322,  323,  326  ;  and  passim 
Cicero,  Marcus,  152,  227 
Cicero,  Quintus,  25,  89,  152,  173, 
174,  227,  253,  254,  308 
Cilician  pirates,  208 
Circus  Flaminius,  22,  293 
Circus  Maximus,  13,  14,  292,  293, 
299,  300,  301 
Cleopatra,  168,  212 
Clients,  269 
Clivus  Capitolinus,  20 
Clivus  sacer,  3,  17,  18 
Cloaca  maxima,  12,  18 
Clodia,  129,  155,  249 
Clodius,  20,  38,  48,  226,  324 
Cluvius,  257 
Cocmptio,  138,  139,  140 
Coenaculum,  29 
Coinage,  80  ff. 

Collegia,  45,  46,  215 
Colline  gate,  Sulla’s  victory  at  the, 
294 

Colosseum,  the,  16 
Columella,  220,  278 
Comedy,  305  ff. 

Comissatio,  282 
Comitium,  the,  19 
Commercii,  ius,  138  n. 

Compluvium,  241 
Concordia,  temple  of,  20 
Conducticii,  219 
Con/arreatio,  136-139,  147  n. 
Coniugalia  praecepta  (Plutarch’s),  145 
Connubii,  ius,  138  n. 

Constantine,  arch  of,  16 
Consul,  the,  21,  58,  229 
Consus,  altar  of,  13,  300 
Contubernium,  193,  194 
Convivium,  282 
Copa  (“  Virgil’s  ”),  51 
Corfinium,  7 
Cornelia,  153,  154 
Cornelius,  126 

Crassus,  31,  62,  87,  108,  296 
Cumae,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  257 
Curia,  the,  19,  20,  311 
Curio,  304 

Debtors,  85,  86 
Declamatio,  197,  202 
Deduclio,  142 
Democritus,  329 

Deorum,  De  Nalura  (Cicero’s),  335 


INDEX 


359 


Diana,  temple  of,  14 

Die  natali,  De  (Censorinus’s),  266 

Diffarreatio,  147  n. 

Diomedes,  villa  of,  254,  255 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  228,  229 
Dionysus,  worship  of,  333 
Di  i  enates.  See  Penates 
Diphilus,  the  actor,  306 
Divorce,  147 
Dolia,  54 

Domus,  28,  29,  237  if. 

Dos,  144  ft. 

Drama,  the,  305  ff. 

Dyrrhachium,  importation  of  corn 
into,  35  ;  battle  of,  346 


Emetics,  use  of,  1283,  284 
Ennius,  104,  305 
Epicureanism,  121-124,  327 
Epicurus,  329 
Epulurn  Joins,  291,  292 
Equester,  Ordo.  See  Ordo  equester 
Equirria,  300 

Equites.  See  Ordo  equester 
Ergastula,  233 
Esquiline  hill,  4,  16  n.,  24 
Etruscans,  the,  5,  9 
Evander,  2,  3,  4 
Exedra,  242,  244,  255 

Fabius,  arch  of,  17 
Fabri  ferrarii,  54 

FabulaeAtellanae,%\b,3\§ ;  palliatae, 
305  ;  togatae,  305,  317 
Familiae  urbanae,  216 
Fate,  342,  343 
Fercula,  292 
Feriae,  286  ff. 

Festa,  285  ff. 

Figuli,  54 

Figulus,  Nigidius,  347 

Flaccus,  Yerrius,  228 

Flamen  Dialis,  39,  136,  137,  321  ; 

Quirinalis,  288  n. 

Flaminius,  293 
Flainmeum,  141 

Florales,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Florales 
Fueneratores,  81 
Foenus,  81 

Formiae,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  256,  258 
Forum  Boarium,  2,  12,  18,  22,  301 
l  orum  Romanum,  3,  13,  15,  17-19,  74, 
75,  245,  246,  271,  272,  303,  309 
Friedlander,  214 
Frontinus,  40,  42  ft. 

Fullones,  52 


Funeral  games,  303,  304 
Furrina,  the  grove  of,  14 

Gabinius,  92 
Gellius,  Aulus,  81 
Genseric,  5 
Gilds.  See  Collegia 
Gladiators,  302  ff. 

Gracchus,  Gaius,  14,  36-39,  61,  107, 
108,  272 

Gracchus,  Tiberius,  149,  295 
Grammaticus,  187,  189 
Grassatores,  209 
Greeks,  183 

Hannibal,  5,  65 
Hercules,  2,  3,  13,  141 
Hirtius,  111  n. 

Honorum,  ius,  138  ft. 

Horace,  188,  268,  351 
H'irtensius,  158,  250,  296,  314 
Horti  Caesaris,  12  n. 

Tentaculum,  270 
Impluvium,  241 

Institutio  Oratoris  (Quintilian’s),  195 

Insulae,  15,  28-32,  48,  237 

Invention c,  De  (Cicero’s),  110,  195 

Isis,  worship  of,  322 

Iura,  138 

Ius  civile,  324 

Ius  divinum,  286,  323,  324 

Ius  gentium,  117 

Janiculum,  the,  4 
Janus,  “temple  "of,  20 
Julius  Obsequens,  344 
Juno,  temple  of,  17 
Jupiter,  291,  321,  337  ff. 

Jupiter  Farreus,  136  ;  Julius,  349 ; 
Optimus  Maximus,  temple  of,  17, 
21,  291,  292  ;  Stator,  temple  of,  16 
Juturna,  spring  of,  19 

tc  King,”  game  of,  172,  290,  291 

Laberius,  317,  318 

Lar,  141,  193,  238,  240,  241,  242 

Lares,  shrine  of,  16 

Latifundium,  221,  222,  233 

Latina,  Via.  See  Via  Latina 

Latins,  the,  5 

Latium,  5 

Law-courts,  the,  17,  273 
Lectisternia,  333 

Lectus ,  278-280  ;  consulates,  279  ; 
genialis,  241 

Legibus,  De  (Cicero’s),  253,  323,  326 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


360 


Lentulus,  296 
Lepidus,  164 
Liberalia,  the,  192  n. 

Libertinus,  224,  228 
Libertus,  224 

Litemum,  Scipio’s  villa  at,  247,  248 
Livius  Andronicus,  228,  312 
Livy,  6,  9,  10,  350 
Lucretius,  109,  122,  134,  247,  326 
Lucretius  Yespillo,  Q.,  159  if. 
Lucullus,  111,  113  n.,  124,  157,  296 
Ludi,  288  ff.  ;  Apollinares,  292, 

293,  295,  301,  306  ;  Ceriales,  293, 

294,  300  ;  Florales,  293,  294,  296, 
301  ;  Magni,  see  Romani  ;  Mega¬ 
lenses,  292-294,  296,  301,  333  ; 
Novemdiales,  304  ;  Plebeii,  292, 
293,  300  ;  Romani,  291,  292,  294, 
296,  297,  300  ;  Victoriae,  294 

Ludus  Trojae,  300 
Lupercal,  the,  3 
Lupercalia,  the,  290 

Magister,  73 

Magna  Mater,  293,  333 

Mancipes,  72 

Manes,  343 

Mangones,  211 

Manus,  136,  139,  146 

Marcius  Rex,  Q.,  41 

Marius,  209,  226,  303 

Mars,  137,  300  ;  temple  of,  14 

Martial,  4 

Matrimonium,  iustum,  135,  137,  138 
Megalenses,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Mega¬ 
lenses 
Mensa,  279 

Mcnsae,  281  ;  rationes,  81 

Meridiatio,  274 

Mctae,  the,  14 

Metellus  Celer,  155 

Metellus  Macedonieus,  149,  150 

Milo,  131,  221 

Mimes,  316-318 

Minerva,  temple  of,  17,  46 

Missio  in  bona,  57 

Missus,  301 

Molo,  199 

Mommsen,  9,  262 

Money-lenders,  56,  57,  60,  80  ff. 

Moretum  (“Virgil’s”),  32,  33  and  n. 

Mos  mo jorum,  324,  325 

Muliones,  55 

Munera,  302  ff. 

Nc/as,  324 

Negotiatores,  26,  70,  80  ff. 

Negoliu/n,  69 


Nepos,  Cornelius,  63,  64,  111 
Neptunalia,  the,  289,  290 
Nicomedes,  king  of  Bithynia,  209 
Novemdiales,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Novem- 
diales 

Novus  homo,  99 
Numa,  45 
Nummular ii,  81 

Obaerati,  219 
Oecus,  242,  244 

Oj/iciis,  De  (Cicero’s),  115,  296 

O per  aril,  218 

Opifices,  44,  46 

Oppia,  lex,  147 

Oppius  Mons,  16  n. 

Oratore,  De  (Cicero’s),  110,  314 
Ordo  equester,  15,  26,  60  ff.,  97,  310  ; 

senatorius,  26,  60,  97  ff 
Oscans,  the,  6 
Ostia,  5-7,  55 
Ovid,  154,  289,  309 

Pacuvius,  305 
Palatine  hill,  3,  4,  15,  25 
Palliatac,  fabulae.  See  Fabulae 
palliatae 

Panaetius,  106,  114-116,  334 
Pantomimus,  318 
Participes,  73 
Patronvs,  269 

Paullus,  L.  Aemilius,  100,  101,  104, 
207,  322 
Paupcrculi,  219 
Peculium,  233 

Penates,  the,  30,  238,  241,  242 ; 

temple  of  the,  16 
Pergamum,  213 

Peristylium,  242-244,  254,  255,  278 
Permutatio,  82 
Pero,  54 

Perscriptio,  82  n. 

Persona,  222,  224 
Phaedrus  the  Epicurean,  199 
Philippi,  battle  of,  346 
Philippus  (tribune),  212 
Philo  the  Academician,  199 
Philodemus,  123 
Pietas,  320 

Piso,  Calpurnius,  123,  280 
Pistores,  48,  49 
Plaetoria,  lex,  266 
Plautus,  50,  305 

Plebeii,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Plebeii 
Pliny,  the  elder,  268  ;  the  younger, 
112 

Plutarch,  171,  190 
Pollio,  Asinius,  111  n. 


INDEX 


361 


Polybius,  72,  105,  106,  114,  175,  190 
Pomerium,  the,  16  n. 

Pompeii,  49,  254,  258,  267 
Pompeius,  75,  78,  88,  102,  124,  208, 
209,  291,  806  ;  house  of,  25  ;  theatre 
of,  22 

Pomponia,  152,  153 
Pons  Aemilius,  4,  12 
Ponte  Rotto,  4  n. 

Pontifex  Maximus,  16,  19,  136,  323, 
326 

Porta  Capena,  14,  15  ;  Carmentalis, 
3,  22  ;  Esquilina,  20 
Portunus,  13 

Posidonius,  115,  116,  332,  335,  338 

Praecia,  157 

Praedts,  73 

Praediola,  254 

Praetor,  the,  57,  126 

Prandium,  273,  274 

Priesthoods,  324  if. 

Promagister,  73,  78 
Pronuba,  142 

Provinces,  +he,  67,  72,  73,  76-79,  95 
Provocation is,  ius,  138  n. 

Ptolemy  Auletes,  91 
Publicani,  26,  69,  70 
Publicum,  69 

Publilius  Syrus,  184,  228,  317,  318 
Punic  wars,  12 
Puteoli,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  257 
Puticulus,  320 
Pythagoreanism,  347 

Quaestiones  Conviviales  (Plutarch’s), 
279 

Quaestorship,  the,  97 
Quintilian,  198 

Quirinal  (hill),  4,  18,  24,  25,  243 
Quirinus,  137 

Rabirius  Postumus,  90  if. 

Redemptor,  218 
Regia,  the,  3  n.,  16,  19 
Religio,  319  if. 

Religion,  319  ff. 

Repetundis,  quaestio  de,  61,  92,  126 
Republica,  De  (Cicero’s),  175,  347 
Res,  223,  224  ;  mancipi,  223 
Rex,  the,  16 
Rexsacrorum,  137 
Rhetorica  ad  Herennium,  110 
Romulus,  10 

Roscius,  the  actor,  314,  315 
Rostra,  the,  19,  264 
Rutilius,  111,  116,  303 

Sabines,  the,  13 


Saccarii,  55 

Sacra,  136  ;  privata,  320  ;  publica , 
320  ;  via,  see  Via  Sacra 
St.  Peter,  church  of,  22 
Salaminians,  the,  125 
Sallust,  111,  156,  243,  350,  351 
Samnium,  6 

San  Gregorio,  Via  di,  15 
Sarpedon,  172 
Sassia,  157,  158 
Saturnalia,  the,  288,  290,  291 
Saturninus,  37,  225,  226 
Saturnus,  temple  of,  20 
Scaevola,  Mucius,  116,  118,  119,  296, 
323,  326 
Scaurus,  296 

Scipio  Aemilianus,  104-106,  227,  248  ; 

Asiaticus,  66.  295  ;  Nasica,  310 
Sempronia,  156 
Senate,  the,  97  if.,  273,  310 
Senatorius,  ordo.  See  Ordo  senatorius 
Seneca,  112 
“Servian  wall,”  24 
Servilius,  132 
Sibylline  books,  the,  333 
Slaves,  11,  47,  48,  59,  204  ff.,  278,  280, 
290,  298  n. 

Societates  publicanorum,  70  ff. 

Socii,  72 

Sodalicia,  collegia.  See  Collegia 
Soleae,  281 

Somnium  Scipionis  (Cicero’s),  348 
Spanish  silver  mines,  66 
Spartacus,  221 
Spina,  301 
Sponsalia,  140  n. 

Sportula,  269 

Stoics,  the,  27,  43,  114-117,  176,  332, 
334  ff. 

Stola  matronalis,  144 
Strabo,  6 

Subura,  the,  18  and  n.,  25,  26 
Suffragii,  ius,  138  n. 

Sulla,  37,  38,  57,  75,  111,  124,  226- 
228,  294,  345 
Sulla,  P.,  226 

Sulpicius  (S.),  Rufus,  118-121,  134, 
261 

Sun-dials,  264,  265 
Supplicationes,  333 
Synthesis,  281 

Tabellarii,  74 
Tabernac,  19,  31  n. 

Tabernae  argentariae,  80 
Tablinum,  241,  242,  244,  255 
Tabulae,  83 
Tabulae  novae,  57 


SOCIAL  LIFE  AT  ROME 


362 


Tabularia,  the,  17,  20,  193 
Tepidarium,  244,  255,  275 
Terence,  228,  305 
Terentia,  150-152 
Theatre,  the,  305  ff. 

Theatre,  building  of  a,  309  ff. 

Thurii,  221 
Tiber,  2,  4,  5,  6,  12 
Tiber  island,  12 
Tibicines,  309  n. 

Tibur,  41 

Time,  divisions  of,  in  the  day,  266 
Tiro  (Cicero's  slave),  82,  151  n.,  200, 
223 

Tirocinium  fori ,  194 
Titus,  arch  of,  16 

Toga,  151  ;  libera,  193  ;  praetexta, 
141,  192  ;  virilis,  191 
Togatae,  fabulae.  See  Fabulae  togatae 
Tragedy,  305  ff. 

Tributum,  67 
Triclinia,  278-280 
Triumph,  a,  21 
Trofei  di  Mario,  42 
Tullia  (Cicero’s  daughter),  120,  140, 
259,  348 

Tullianum,  the,  20 

Tunica,  51 

Turia,  the  story  of,  159  ff. 

Tusculum,  Cicero’s  villa  at,  251,  252 
Tutela ,  139,  162 
Tutor,  139 

Twelve  Tables,  the,  179,  180,  264  n. 


Usus,  138 


Valerius  Maximus,  172,  189 
Varro,  93,  112,  116,  175,  177,  209, 
210,  219,  221,  222,  232,  260,  261, 
274,  281  n.,  321,  333,  335  ff. 

Varro,  Terentius  (consul),  44 
Veii,  9 

Velabrum,  the,  13,  18,  22 
Velia,  the,  16 
Venationes,  312 
Venus  Victrix,  temple  of,  311 
Verres,  73 

Vesta,  19,  238,  241,  242,  321  :  temple 
of,  16,  18,  19 
Vestal  Virgins,  19 
Veterans,  Roman,  11 
Via  Aurelia,  4  ;  Appia,  14,  258  ; 
Collatina,  41  ;  Latina,  14  ;  Sacra, 
16,  17,  18,  21,  245,  292 
Victoriae,  Ludi.  See  Ludi  Victoriae 
Vicus  Tuscus,  18,  22 
Vilicus,  217,  233,  278 
Villa  psendurbana,  254 
Vinalia,  the,  39 
Vindicta,  224 

Virgil,  2,  9,  10,  188,  304,  325,  341-343, 

351 

Voconia,  lex,  147 


Water-clocks,  introduction  of,  264, 
265 


THE  END 


APPENDIX 


Page  1,  1.  12.  totam  aestimare  Romam:  to  appreciate  Rome  in  its 

entirety. 

Page  3, 1.  12.  Hinc  ad  Tarpeiam,  etc. :  he  leads  him  next  to  the  Tar- 
peian  Rock  and  to  the  Capitol,  now  of  gold,  once  thick  with  wild 
bushes. 

Page  4, 1.  24.  Hinc  septem,  etc. :  from  here  you  may  see  the  seven 
hills  of  the  sovereign  city,  and  appreciate  Rome  as  a  whole,  the 
Alban  and  the  Tusculan  hills,  and  all  the  cool  suburban  retreats. 

Page  10,  1.  1.  rerum,  etc.  Rome  became  a  supreme  thing  of  beauty. 

Page  10,  1.  13.  nativa  praesidia:  natural  defences. 

Page  10, 1.  21.  regionum,  etc.  A  site  in  the  middle  of  Italy,  singu¬ 
larly  fitted  by  nature  for  the  development  of  the  city. 

Page  17, 1.  2.  nec  ferrea,  etc. :  nor  has  he  seen  the  hardships  of  the 
law,  the  mad  forum,  or  the  archives  of  the  people. 

Page  22, 1.  2.  Ille,  ille,  etc. :  he  it  was,  Jupiter  himself,  who  with¬ 
stood  the  attack,  he  who  willed  it  that  the  Capitol,  that  these 
temples,  that  the  whole  city  and  you  all  should  be  safe. 

Page  29,  footnote  1.  in  montibus,  etc. :  built  between  mountains  and 
valleys,  raised  and  almost  suspended  on  high,  through  the  stones 
of  its  buildings,  with  its  back  streets. 

Page  39,  1.  6.  ubi  semel,  etc. :  he  who  has  once  strayed  from  the 
right  path  will  come  to  calamity. 

Page  52,  1.  11.  lanificium:  the  working  of  wool. 

Page  55,  1.  26.  graffiti:  ancient  scribblings,  scratched,  painted,  or 
otherwise  marked  on  a  wall,  column,  tablet,  or  other  surface. 

Page  61, 1.  4.  quaestio  de  repetundis :  court  for  extortion. 

Page  64, 1.  15.  familiarem,  etc. :  intimate  with  L.  Lucullus,  wealthy, 
of  intractable  character. 

Page  73,  1.  14.  qui  de  censoribus,  etc. :  whosoever  shall  have  secured 
a  contract  from  the  censors  shall  not  be  accepted  as  associate  or 
shareholder. 

Page  73,  footnote  2.  Asiatici,  etc. :  of  the  public  revenue  of  Asia,  he 
had  a  very  small  share. 

Page  91,  1.  3.  fortissimus,  etc.:  a  most  powerful  and  important 
farmer  of  the  public  revenue. 

Page  93,  1.  20.  insanum  forum:  the  forum  in  its  maddening  bustle. 

Page  116, 1.  12.  doctissimus,  etc. :  the  most  learned  of  that  time. 

Page  121, 1.  11.  monumentum,  etc. :  a  monument  more  enduring  than 
bronze. 


i 


11 


APPENDIX 


Page  123, 1.  20.  vere  humanus :  truly  refined. 

Page  127,  1.  23.  omnia,  etc. :  he  transforms  himself  into  all  porten¬ 
tous  shapes. 

Page  130,  1.  20.  manager  ses  transitions:  to  pass  gradually  over  to 
the  other  side. 

Page  132, 1.  18.  de  vi:  of  criminal  violence. 

Page  133, 1.  9.  Uni  se,  etc.:  they  are  addicted  to  one  and  the  same 
practice,  that  they  may  cautiously  cheat  and  craftily  contend, 
outdo  each  other  in  blandishments,  feign  honesty,  set  snares  as  if 
they  were  all  enemies  to  each  other. 

Page  133, 1.  28.  rari  nantes,  etc. :  few  and  scattered  swimmers  in 
the  vast  abyss. 

Page  142  (bottom).  Claudite,  etc.:  close  the  doors,  maidens,  enough 
have  we  sung.  And  you,  noble  couple,  live  happily  and  apply 
your  vigorous  youth  to  the  assiduous  task  of  wedlock. 

Page  149,  footnote  2.  Si  quid,  etc. :  if  a  woman  act  reprehensibly 
or  disgracefully,  he  punishes  her  ;  if  she  has  drunk  wine,  if  she 
has  done  something  wrong  with  a  stranger,  he  condemns  her.  If 
you  surprise  your  wife  in  the  act  of  adultery,  you  may  with 
impunity  kill  her  without  any  form  of  judgment ;  but  if  she 
caught  you  in  adultery,  she  would  not  dare  touch  you,  for  she 
has  no  right. 

Page  150, 1.  11.  liberorum,  etc.:  in  order  to  have  children. 

Page  155,  1.  22.  Odi,  etc. :  I  hate  and  I  love.  You  ask  perhaps  how 
that  can  be.  I  do  not  know,  I  feel  it,  and  am  distressed. 

Page  155  (bottom).  Elle  apportait,  etc.:  she  revealed  in  her  private 
behavior,  in  her  affections,  the  same  vehemence  and  the  same 
passion  which  her  brother  showed  in  public  life.  Ready  for  all 
excesses,  and  not  blushing  to  confess  them,  loving  and  hating 
with  fury,  incapable  of  controlling  herself,  and  opposed  to  all 
constraint,  she  did  not  belie  the  great  and  haughty  family  from 
which  she  was  sprung. 

Page  178, 1.  3.  rusticorum,  etc. : 

The  farmer-soldier’s  manly  brood 
Was  trained  to  delve  the  Sabine  sod. 

And  at  an  austere  mother’s  nod 
To  hewr  and  fetch  the  fagot  wood. 

Page  178, 1.  20.  Maxima,  etc. :  the  greatest  concern  must  be  shown 
for  children. 

Page  185,  1.  8.  Avarus,  etc.: 

The  covetous  is  the  cause  of  his  own  misery. 

Bravery  is  increased  by  daring  and  fear  by  hesitation. 

You  can  more  easily  discover  fortune  than  cling  to  it. 

The  wrath  of  the  just  is  to  be  dreaded. 

A  man  dies  every  time  that  he  is  bereft  of  his  kin. 


APPENDIX 


in 


Man  is  loaned,  not  given  to  life. 

The  best  strife  is  rivalry  in  benignity. 

Nothing  is  pleasing  unless  renewed  by  variety. 

Bad  is  the  plan  which  cannot  be  altered. 

Less  often  would  you  err  if  you  knew  how  much  you  don’t  know. 
He  who  shows  clemency  always  comes  out  victorious. 

He  who  respects  his  oath  succeeds  in  everything. 

Where  old  age  is  at  fault  youth  is  badly  trained. 

Page  187,  1.  7.  Grais,  etc. :  the  muse  gave  genius  to  the  Greeks 
and  the  pride  of  language,  covetous  of  nothing  but  of  praise. 
But  the  Roman  youths  by  long  reckonings  learn  to  split  the  coin 
into  a  hundred  parts.  Let  young  Albinus  say :  “If  you  take 
one  away  from  five  pence,  what  results?”  “A  groat.”  Good, 
you’ll  thrive. 

Page  189, 1.1.  In  grammaticis,  etc.:  in  the  study  of  literature,  the 
perusal  of  the  poets,  the  knowledge  of  history,  the  interpretation 
of  words,  the  peculiar  tone  of  pronunciation. 

Page  191,  1.  9.  Orator  est,  etc.:  an  orator,  my  son,  is  an  upright 
man  skilled  in  speaking. 

Page  191, 1.  11.  Rem  tene,  etc.:  master  the  subject;  the  words  will 
follow. 

Page  196, 1.  9.  vir  bonus,  etc. :  see  page  191,  1.  9. 

Page  196,  1.  13.  Non  enim,  etc. :  eloquence  and  oratorical  aptness 
obtain  good  results  if  they  be  swayed  by  a  right  understanding 
and  by  the  discretion  and  control  of  the  mind. 

Page  210,  footnote  1.  Mancipiis,  etc.:  avoid  being  like  the  Cappa¬ 
docian  monarch,  rich  in  slaves  and  penniless  in  purse. 

Page  211,  footnote  1.  pone  aedem,  etc. :  behind  the  temple  of  Castor 
are  those  to  whom  you’d  be  sorry  to  lend  money. 

Page  215, 1.  18.  An  te  ibi,  etc. :  would  you  stay  there  among  those 
harlots,  prostitutes  of  bakers,  leavings  of  the  breadmakers, 
smeared  with  rank  cosmetics,  nasty  devotees  of  slaves  ? 

Page  216,  footnote  2.  agrum,  etc. :  in  cultivating  the  fields  or  in 
hunting,  servile  occupations,  etc. 

Page  233, 1.  5.  Nec  turpe,  etc. :  what  a  master  commands  cannot  be 
disgraceful. 

Page  233,  footnote  3.  Coli  rura,  etc. :  it  is  a  bad  practice  to  fill  the 
fields  with  men  from  the  workhouse,  or  to  have  anything  done  by 
men  who  are  forsaken  by  hope. 

Page  235,  footnote  2.  Regum,  etc. :  we  have  taken  the  tyrant’s  temper. 

Page  239,  1.  10.  ante  focos,  etc. :  it  was  customary  once  to  take 
places  in  the  long  benches  before  the  fireplace,  and  to  trust  that 
the  gods  were  present  at  our  table. 

Page  246.  1.  5.  nunc  vero,  etc. :  but  now  from  morning  till  evening, 
on  holidays  and  working  days,  the  whole  people,  senators  and 


IV 


APPENDIX 


commoners,  busy  themselves  in  the  forum  and  retire  nowhere, 
etc.  (See  page  133,  1.  9,  and  translation  of  that  passage.) 

Page  246,  footnote  2.  Urbem,  etc. :  remain  in  the  city,  Rufus  ;  stay 
there  and  live  in  that  light.  All  foreign  travel  is  humble  and 
lowly  for  those  that  can  work  for  the  greatness  of  Rome. 

Page  247,  footnote  1.  Frequens,  etc.:  constant  change  of  abode  is  a 
sign  of  unstable  mind. 

Page  248,  1.  12.  contentio,  etc. :  not  a  straining  of  the  mind,  but  a 
relaxation. 

Page  259,  1.  12.  locus,  etc. :  a  pleasant  site,  on  the  sea  itself,  and  can 
be  seen  from  Antium  and  Circeii. 

Page  265,  footnote  3.  Ut  ilium,  etc. :  may  the  gods  confound  him 
who  first  invented  the  hours,  and  who  first  placed  a  sundial  in 
this  city.  Pity  on  me !  They  have  cut  up  my  day  in  compart¬ 
ments.  Once  when  I  was  a  boy  my  stomach  was  my  clock,  and  it 
was  much  more  fitting  and  reliable;  it  never  failed  to  warn  me  ex¬ 
cept  when  there  was  nothing;  now,  even  when  there  is  something, 
there  is  no  eating  unless  it  so  please  the  sun.  For  the  whole  city 
is  full  of  sundials,  and  most  of  the  people  crawl  on  in  need  of 
food  and  drink. 

Page  269,  footnote  1.  Romae,  etc.:  in  Rome  it  was  for  a  long  time 
a  joy  and  a  pride  to  open  up  the  house  at  early  morning  and 
attend  to  the  legal  needs  of  the  clients. 

Page  275,  1.  20.  Nesciit  vivere:  he  did  not  know  how  to  live. 

Page  277,  1.  10.  ad  noctem:  late  into  the  night. 

Page  280,  1.  17.  Saepe  tribus,  etc. :  often  you  would  see  three  couches 
with  four  guests  apiece. 

Page  283,  1.  21.  ’EfKTiKr/v,  etc.:  he  was  under  the  emetic  cure,  and 
consequently  ate  and  drank  freely  and  with  much  satisfaction; 
and  everything  certainly  was  good  and  well  served ;  nay  more,  I 
may  say  that 

“  Though  the  cook  was  good, 

’Twas  Attic  salt  that  flavored  best  the  food.” 

Page  283,  footnote  1.  qua  lege,  etc. :  which  law  did  not  determine  the 
expense,  but  the  kind  of  victuals  and  the  manner  of  cooking 
them. 

Page  285,  1.  11.  Agricolo,  etc.:  the  farmer  is  the  first  who  after  a 
long  day  of  toil  in  the  fields  adapted  rustic  songs  to  the  laws  of 
metre  ;  the  first  in  satisfied  leisure  to  modulate  a  song  on  his 
reed,  which  he  would  say  before  the  gods  decked  with  flowers. 
It  was  the  farmer,  O  Bacchus,  who  with  his  face  colored  with 
reddish  minium,  taught  his  untrained  feet  the  first  movements  of 
the  dance. 

Page  287,  1.  13.  Quippe  etiam,  etc. :  for  even  on  holy  days,  divine 
and  human  laws  allow  us  to  perform  certain  works.  No  religion 


APPENDIX 


v 


has  forbidden  to  clear  the  channels,  to  raise  a  fence  before  the 
corn,  to  lay  snares  for  birds,  to  fire  the  thorns,  and  plunge  in  the 
wholesome  river  a  flock  of  bleating  sheep. 

Page  303,  1.  2.  lex  de  ambitu :  law  concerning  the  courting  of  popular 
favor  in  canvassing. 

Page  307, 1.  4.  Eandem,  etc. :  a  time  will  come  when  you  will  bewail 
that  valor  of  yours. 

Page  309,  1.  7.  Spectatum,  etc. :  they  come  to  see,  but  they  come 
also  to  be  seen. 

Page  313, 1.  27.  summus  artifex:  consummate  artist. 

Page  314,  1.  3.  gravis:  serious. 

Page  314, 1.  4.  gravitas :  seriousness. 

Page  315,  1.  14.  Fescennina,  etc. :  the  rude  Fescennine  farce  grew 
from  rites  like  these,  where  rustic  taunts  were  hurled  in  alternate 
verse  ;  and  the  pleasing  license,  tolerated  from  year  to  year,  gam¬ 
bolled,  etc. 

Page  317,  1.  18.  Nihil  mihi,  etc. :  know  well  that  I  lacked  nothing 
except  company  with  whom  to  laugh  in  a  friendly  way  and  intel¬ 
ligently  over  these  things. 

Page  324,  1.  28.  mos  maiorum:  the  customs  of  our  ancestors. 

Page  327, 1.  12.  Felix,  etc. :  blessed  is  he  who  succeeded  in  knowing 
the  causes  of  events. 

Page  327, 1.  16.  Fortunatus,  etc. :  fortunate  he  also  who  knows  the 
rustic  gods. 

Page  333,  1.  6.  lectisternia :  a  feast  of  the  gods  during  which  their 
images  on  pillars  were  placed  in  the  streets. 

Page  333,  1.  6.  supplicationes :  religious  solemnities  for  supplication. 

Page  333, 1.  6.  ludi:  games. 

Page  339,  1.  23.  numen :  godhead,  deity. 

Page  340,  footnote  3.  idem  etiam,  etc. :  he  says  also  that  Jupiter  is 
the  power  of  this  law,  eternal  and  immutable,  which  is  the  guide, 
so  to  speak,  of  our  life  and  the  principle  of  our  duties  ;  a  law 
which  he  calls  a  fatal  necessity,  an  eternal  truth  of  future  things. 

Page  341,  1.  15.  qua:  as. 

Page  341, 1.  26.  0  qui  res,  etc. :  thou  who  rulest  with  eternal  sway 
the  doings  of  men  and  gods. 

Page  342,  1.  1.  Olli,  etc.:  the  sire  of  men  and  gods,  smiling  to  her 
with  that  aspect  wherewith  he  clears  the  tempestuous  sky,  gently 
kissed  his  daughter’s  lips ;  then  thus  replies :  Cytherea,  cease 
from  fear;  immovable  to  thee  remain  the  fates  of  thy  people. 

Page  351,  1.  13.  I  up  piter,  etc. :  Jove  reserved  these  shores  for  the 
just,  when  he  alloyed  the  golden  age  with  brass;  with  brass, 
then  with  iron  he  hardened  the  ages,  from  which  there  shall  be  a 
happy  escape  according  to  my  predictions. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


